Quality management system (QMS)

Our QMS is a collection of documents and processes that help us to understand and manage the quality of our work and improve client satisfaction. It is designed to conform with the ISO 9001:2015 standard.

We have to:

• Understand the expectations of our clients and our industry about what quality work looks like. For example, our government clients expect us to follow the GDS Service Standard. We keep a record of the various internal and external issues and parties that have an interest in our quality management system
• Identify risks that might affect our ability to do quality work. For example, there is a risk that AWS might go down and our clients’ websites with it.
• Identify opportunities for us to improve the quality of our work and better meet our clients’ needs. For example by taking advantage of new technologies.
• Develop documented standards and processes that allow us to deliver the quality work that our clients expect, taking account of the risks and opportunities. For example:
• • Policies, guidance, and checklists in the Playbook and elsewhere that guide us in how to do our work well.
  • Recruitment processes that ensure that we only recruit suitably skilled and experienced people, whether as permanent staff or as contractors.
  • Onboarding and training to make sure everyone understands what quality work looks like for their discipline.
  • Reviews and audits of our work to make sure that it is meeting our standards.
  • Processes for gathering feedback from our clients about the quality of our work, and from our team about ways to improve our processes and guidance.
• Implement those processes effectively, and support them with appropriate resources (including people, training, infrastructure, facilities, and supporting services).
• Document how we follow our processes and verify that we’ve produced quality work. For example, documenting user research permissions, or test logs on pull requests.
• Set and work towards objectives for how we want to improve and maintain the quality of our work.
• Continually improve our ways of working and quality management, informed by evidence, feedback, and lessons learned.

We need ISO 9001 certification to bid for certain work. If our work does not meet our quality standards, we may cause our clients and their users problems, clients may not want to work with us again, and there could be legal consequences for the company.

Review meetings

The QMS team has quarterly meetings to review our QMS. There is one meeting for each discipline (User Research, Content Design, Development etc.) and one for the QMS as a whole.

During these meetings we review our processes and documentation, as well as the expectations of our clients, our objectives and metrics, our resourcing, and any feedback or audit results, to make sure that we can deliver quality work.

Audits

We carry out regular internal audits. During an audit, the QMS team and other key people will:

• Look at how our quality management system is performing
• Check how well policies have been implemented
• Check how well procedures are being followed
• Determine how healthy the element of the QMS under review is

An independent, external assessor audits us for ISO9001 certification.

After an audit, the auditor writes up their observations and recommendations and shares them with the QMS team, who then plan how to improve our QMS and processes.

Making changes to the QMS

The QMS will be continually evolving as we learn things and the world around us changes. Anyone can propose changes.

See the QMS Change Control Procedure.

Last updated: 8 December 2025