The Local Digital team is building a digital Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) for local government service to make cyber resilience assessments easier to complete, manage and repeat.
CAF for local government helps councils strengthen their cyber resilience. However, completing, reviewing and repeating assessments can take time. To help make this process simpler, we're developing LG WebCAF, a digital service that will support councils to manage their CAF assessments more easily and consistently over time.
In this blog post, we share:
- an update on how we’ve been developing LG WebCAF
- a short video showing the early prototype
- an opportunity to take part in the next phase of testing and development
Your feedback will help us understand how the service works in real conditions and how we can continue to improve it.
Developing LG WebCAF with councils
LG WebCAF will support CAF as a long-term, repeatable approach to assessing and managing cyber resilience. We’re designing the service with councils to make sure it works for the sector’s needs and the realities of teams completing the CAF for local government.
What we’ve learned so far
We recently completed the alpha phase. During alpha, we built prototypes of the service and tested them with councils through user research.
This feedback has helped us understand how the service needs to work in practice. We’ve used it to improve the design and focus on what councils need most. This includes:
- giving users flexibility to move between different parts of the assessment in a way that reflects how their teams work
- providing clearer guidance at the right point in the journey, particularly for councils that are new to CAF for local government
- supporting collaboration between teams and subject matter experts involved in completing assessments
The video below shows an early prototype of LG WebCAF. The service is still evolving, and we'll continue testing and improving it with councils throughout development to make sure it works in real-world conditions.
As part of alpha, we also completed a service assessment. An independent panel reviewed the service against the 14 points of the government Service Standard.
The assessors were positive about the service overall and also identified areas for improvement. These included testing a simpler version of the prototype and strengthening our approach to measuring performance.
Following further design work and another round of testing with council users, we completed a reassessment in July. You can read the full report here.
The alpha assessment helped us identify what we need to explore next. This includes how LG WebCAF supports the full CAF for local government journey, accessibility requirements, evidence uploads and the support councils need to get started.
Moving into private beta
We’re now moving into private beta. This is the next stage of development, where we will build and test a working version of LG WebCAF with a small group of councils.
Private beta will help us understand how the service works in real conditions for councils, independent assurers and MHCLG colleagues.
We’ll test more of the CAF for local government journey, including:
- onboarding
- setting the scope
- self-assessment
- assurance
- implementation and improvement planning
Private beta is planned to run for around a year. After this phase, we expect to make the service available to all councils, while continuing to test, learn and improve it.
While LG WebCAF is still being developed, councils should continue with their current CAF assessments using the guidance and workbooks available on the CAF for local government pages on security.gov.uk.
Take part in the next phase of WebCAF
We’re looking for councils to take part in private beta testing. This will involve:
- testing the service
- sharing feedback
- helping to shape a tool that works for local government
By getting involved, you'll help us:
- understand how LG WebCAF works in real conditions
- what needs to improve before the service is used more widely across the sector
If your council would like to take part, please register your interest.
Stay in touch
You can keep up to date with the LG WebCAF and our wider cyber work by:
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