CAF-aligned DSPT interim assessment guidance

Your organisation may need to submit an interim assessment, with a deadline of 31 December. Organisations who need to submit this are listed below. You do not need to wait until the deadline to publish your interim assessment. You can publish it as soon as you’re ready, once this feature is available on the DSPT.

Other sectors are not required to publish an interim assessment.

An interim assessment indicates that your self-assessment is under way and that you understand your position in December. It may also highlight to your organisation areas which need particular focus before the full assessment deadline of 30 June.

The interim assessment is your organisation’s position at the time of publication. It is not a forecast of the expected position when you publish your full assessment by 30 June.

The interim assessment is not formally assessed by NHS England and DHSC as part of performance management. It allows us to understand the current position of organisations against the CAF DSPT profile across the different outcomes, review interim responses, and determine whether further guidance or support is required.

You should record your organisation’s current achievement level (not achieved, partially achieved, or achieved) against each outcome. It would be helpful to us if you included any evidence or supporting statements to provide context to the achievement levels, but this is not mandatory.

For outcomes that have a policy question (A2.b: Assurance, B2.a: Identity verification, authentication and authorisation, B4.d: Vulnerability management and C1.d: Identifying security incidents), you will not be able to select any achievement level other than not achieved if you have not confirmed that you’re meeting the policy question.

If you’ve uploaded the essential functions template, it will be included in the interim assessment.

There is an interim assessment section, including a ‘publish interim assessment’ button, on the assessment screen. You can check your answers and update information, if required. When saving outcomes, they can be saved as 'draft' or 'complete' when publishing.

There are no minimum expectations for each outcome before you can publish, as it’s a snapshot of current progress. Your SIRO should sign off your interim assessment.

Details of your interim assessment are not shared publicly. We only publish confirmation that you’ve completed it and the date it was published. You’ll receive an email confirmation once you’ve published it.

Interim assessments will be covered during our webinars.