Evidence Capture - Providing guidance / reducing risk due to COVID-19

Multiple councils have been in contact with us in connection with measures they would like to take in response to  the government’s guidelines on social interaction, isolation and risk reduction. In particular, the guidance they show to customers and in terms of changing their policies on provision of evidence. Especially guidance/rule changes that ensure the number of people coming to offices to hand in evidence to support claims / changes in circumstances is minimised.

This note is to highlight some quick tips using all of the built in functionality of our online forms.

Updating your guidance

The current government guidelines on social interaction, isolation and risk reduction are in flux. So   being able to change content at a rapid rate will be key. Using ‘Edit mode’ within the online forms enables you to:

• Change help/guidance notes
• Change question wording
• Change the content on start/evidence/submission pages
• Add clear alerts/banners

The following provide a couple of examples of this:

If you’d like to add this alert style message like the above you can copy this:

<style> .Covid.alert {

    background-color: #fffdd4;

    padding: 20px;

}

.Covid.alert::before {

    content: "\f05a";

    font-family: fontawesome;

    font-size: 24px;

    float: left;

    padding-right: 15px;

}

</style> <div class="Covid alert"> <h3>Coronavirus (COVID-19)</h3> <p>See the latest advice about COVID-19 (Coronavirus) <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/"> on the NHS website here</a></p> </div>

And paste it here within edit mode - making sure to first click the ‘Source’ option:

You may want to provide guidance on the evidence specifically:

If you’d like to add this alert style message like this you can copy this:

<style> .Covid.alert {

    background-color: #fffdd4;

    padding: 20px;

}

.Covid.alert::before {

    content: "\f05a";

    font-family: fontawesome;

    font-size: 24px;

    float: left;

    padding-right: 15px;

}

</style> <div class="Covid alert"> <h3>Coronavirus (COVID-19)</h3> <p>

As a result of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) we are taking steps to delay the potential spread of the virus. As such we only wish to receive electronically. You should NOT come to our offices to hand this in in person.

</p>

<p>

The information must be provided within 1 month. If you do not provide the information requested it will delay your claim.

</p> </div>

And paste it within edit mode - making sure to first click the ‘Source’ option (as shown above).

You can of course do the same on the submission page to actively remind people of the option to upload evidence online after submission:

Reducing risk with digital evidence

You may want to remove the ability to send in/hand in evidence to mitigate against potential risks associated with contact.

Since 2012, we have supported the ability to upload evidence digitally within your online forms and you can also support the upload of evidence before and after submission of online forms.

Just in case you’re not currently using this, this is how it’s done. eClaim and eChanges both have the following settings, which can be set to ‘true’ in eGovHub System Management I.e. here:

You should set all of these to true and then publish each form from development to live when you’re happy with it.

Changing your Risk Based Verification (RBV) rules

Most RBV policies will have a restriction of some form on high risk / medium risk cases in that evidence needs to be provided in original form. As a result of COVID-19 some councils are changing this policy so that every risk category can upload evidence online.

There are two things to be aware of. When RBV is in place there are dynamic paragraphs that appear above the list of evidence based upon the risk category of the claim/change.

You can find these quickly by navigating to ‘Resources’ in System Management and selecting the form i.e. eClaim or eChanges. Then press Ctrl and F to search for the words Rule_Header. This will locate the above three paragraphs. You can change the wording of these to be whatever you like in line with the different risk categories.

Also if you want to allow customers to upload evidence for all cases you need to change these settings to true:

This technically means people will be told to provide evidence in a way that means no one is being told to come to the office.

And also you will need to do the equivalent for eChanges for the approach you take.