Guidance for member administrators
Every member organisation of the Velocity Interoperability Network appoints at least one administrator when it joins the Network. The administrator is the first line of support within the organisation: they grant and remove access to the shared services for the organisation's staff, receive notices about the services, and bring to the Support Service the matters they cannot settle themselves. This guidance sets out what the Service expects of administrators and what administrators may expect of the Service.
The division of work is simple. Anything that concerns an account at your own organisation is yours to do. Anything that concerns the shared services themselves, or another office of the Network, comes to the Service. The Service will always act where an organisation has no administrator or the administrator is unavailable, but it will note that it has done so, and the Registry may raise the matter at the organisation's next membership review.
Responsibilities. An administrator's work falls into six areas.
- Granting access
- Creating accounts for the organisation's staff on the shared services of the Network and assigning the services each account may use. This is the administrator's work, not the Service's.
- Removing access
- Closing the accounts of staff who leave the organisation or whose duties no longer require access, on the day they leave. Accounts that remain open after a departure are the most common finding of the Registry's membership reviews.
- Restoring access
- Resetting the access of a member of staff who is locked out or whose credentials have expired. The Service does this only where the organisation has no administrator or the administrator is unavailable.
- Receiving notices
- Notices of planned maintenance from the Status Service, and notices from the Support Service about changes to the shared services, are sent to administrators, who pass them on within their organisation as they see fit.
- Reporting on behalf of the organisation
- Reporting an outage or a fault once for the organisation, so that the Service handles one request for a site rather than one for each person affected.
- Keeping the registry entry current
- Telling the Registry when an administrator is appointed or steps down and when the organisation's contact details change. The Service reads the registry entry; it cannot change it.
Who does what
| Task | Done by | The Support Service acts |
|---|---|---|
| Create an account for a member of staff | Administrator | Only where the organisation has no administrator |
| Assign or withdraw a shared service on an account | Administrator | On request, where the administrator is unavailable |
| Reset a locked or expired account | Administrator | On request, where the administrator is unavailable |
| Close the account of a leaver | Administrator | Never; the Service does not close accounts on request |
| Report an outage or a fault | Administrator, preferably | Logged under Connectivity, from anyone |
| Ask what a standard means | Either | Referred to the Standards Office |
| Appoint or remove an administrator | Registry | Referred to the Registry |
| Change the organisation's contact details | Registry | Referred to the Registry |
| Report a security incident | Defence Department, by the emergency channel | Not handled through this site |
Setting up a new member of staff
The steps below are the procedure the Service recommends to every administrator. An organisation that follows them will rarely need to write to the Service about access, and will be able to answer a membership review from its own records.
Step 1: Confirm that the person is staff of the organisation
Access to the shared services is for the staff of member organisations. Contractors and visitors are given access only where the organisation's membership terms allow it, and for the period of their engagement.
Step 2: Create the account
Register the account to the person's email address at the organisation. Personal addresses are not accepted, and an account registered to a shared mailbox cannot be traced to a person and will be closed at the next membership review.
Step 3: Assign the services the person's duties require
Assign only those services. A service can be added later in a moment; access that is not needed is a liability for the organisation and for the Network.
Step 4: Tell the person how to get help
New staff should know who their administrator is, that the FAQ answers most questions, and that the Support Service is the place to write when the administrator cannot help.
Step 5: Record the account and the date access is to be reviewed
Keep a record of each account, the services assigned and the date the access was granted, so that the organisation can answer a membership review without delay.
Administrators in figures
- 312
- Member organisations with at least one registered administrator at establishment
- 741
- Administrators registered across the Network
- 38
- Organisations with a single administrator, each written to by the Service
- 44
- Access requests referred to the Identity Service during the transition period
The figures record the position at establishment on 6 September 2026 and, for referrals, the transition period from 10 August to 5 September. Most of the 1,012 access requests received in that period came from organisations whose administrator had not yet been given the means to create accounts; the Service expects the category to fall sharply as that work passes to administrators, and will report on it in October. The volume of requests by category is set out under Contact Us.
Questions administrators ask
Other questions may be sent to contact@support.gov.vin, marked for the attention of the administrator liaison. For the procedure a request follows once it reaches the Service, see How we work; for what the reference number on an acknowledgement means, see Reference numbers and the register; for the times the Service works to, see Service standards.