The REC Portal is designed to provide an effective vehicle for the two-way exchange of information between you and us. It is the online hub of the Retail Energy Code.
228 Users accessed the REC Portal at Go-Live. By 31 March 2022, over than 2,200 Users had registered accounts from over 290 organisations covering all REC Party Categories and a wide range of stakeholders.
Still more people access the REC Portal without registering for an account - since go-live we've been working to ensure that as much information is publically available as possible, except where it is right that access controls should apply.
The Portal provides a foundation upon which we can build new collaborative and digital processes over the coming years, though the initial development of the solution has not been without its challenges.
Since the initial deployment, we have continued to deliver outstanding REC Portal functionality in a series of releases are working closely with RECCo as part of a Post Implementation Project. This functionality will ensure that the Portal becomes fully fit-for-purpose, allowing services across the breadth of the Code Manager to be delivered digitally and in line with initial plans.
In addition to the planned deployments to deliver the outstanding functionality, we have been making cosmetic and content changes to ease stakeholder navigation, provide additional information, and offer ways to provide feedback.
We introduced a Continuous Service Improvement page outlining Portal release contents as a reference point for stakeholders. This page also includes a feedback form to allow stakeholders to provide honest feedback about the Portal and how we can improve our wider services.
We reviewed the user experience on key pages of the Portal and have made changes to the look and feel.
Moving Forward
We're looking to upgrade the User Experience and User Interface of the Portal over the coming months, including improving optimisation of the REC Portal on mobile devices. We held workshops in December and January to understand various stakeholders' use of the Portal and changes that they would like to see.
We're reviewing the outputs and recommendations from the workshops, and will feed these into the enduring Portal roadmap to be communicated in due course.
We're also launching a brand new REC Wiki service - a library of knowledge articles designed to help Portal Users self-serve information about all aspects of the REC and retail market arrangements. This will be constantly curated, with new articles added all the time based on the queries we receive into our Service Desk.
The REC Portal is a service that will continue to evolve over the coming months. We are listening to your feedback, and we are priortising the changes that will provide the greatest impact to the greatest number of Portal Users.
We will soon be in a position to provide updates on the roadmap for REC Portal enhancement. We plan to have multiple major releases per annum, with additional supporting minor releases. Our release strategy will be mindful of timings which may be applicable to Parties or the industry programmes. We will update on the content of each release through the Portal Continuous Improvement Page.
Areas for change within the roadmap include:
We are looking to establish a Portal User Group, made up of a broad spectrum of our user base to help plan future enhancements and to act as a forum for questions and queries. We do not envisage that this will be a physical meeting for parties, but an interactive virtual space for users to communicate and provide feedback. We are looking to establish this group over the summer and will provide further details.
Cick here to access our updated REC Portal User Guide for more information about the functions of the service.