Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the length of time set aside for beta testing of the catch recording app; and what information his Department holds on the use of that app during the beta testing by (a) fishers and (b) service support personnel.

The length of time used for the beta phase of the catch recording service development followed Government Digital Service standards. This involved two phases: a ‘private’ beta phase of service development which involved inviting a limited number of individuals; and a ‘public’ beta phase which involved opening the service up to all users in a phased roll-out.

Feedback obtained from fishers and support personnel during the beta phase of development is held and reflected the need for a simple mobile application.

The Marine Management Organisation continues to work on implementing improvements to the catch recording app based on feedback from existing users.