Functionality changes
Adding new questions to the service questionnaire to collect extra data and updating the reports to include the additional data
Promoting the health of the UK economy through prompt payment
The Challenge
Under the 2017 legislation, it was estimated that over 15,000 large businesses must report on their payment practices and performance. The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) commissioned a new Payment Practices Reporting service to be developed to support three diverse user communities:
- Large businesses submitting prompt payment compliance reports
- Suppliers (including small businesses) – checking prompt payment reliability metrics
- Analysts reviewing overall legislation compliance, trends and issues
By 2018, the new service had completed its development journey to the point of ‘Public Beta’ - up and running for all users to provide operational feedback. BEIS planned to run Public Beta to the end of 2017, then implement feedback in time for transition to Live in mid-2018.
Up to the start of Public Beta, BEIS had used a combination of external agencies and contract staff to build the service. Entering Public Beta coincided with changes to tax regulations for contractors, many of whom left the project. BEIS needed to find a reliable, multi-disciplinary development partner for user research, development and technical support through Public Beta and into Live. Knowledge of the Technology Code of Practice (TCoP) and Government Digital Service (GDS) Service Standard was crucial when choosing a supplier - a search on G-Cloud led BEIS to appoint Shout.
The Solution
Project Adoption & Technical Audit
When inheriting a partially completed project, Shout’s first action is always to run a full technical audit and present an audit report. This creates a clear baseline and sets expectations accurately to set the project up for success. A thorough review of Agile practices, documentation, Scala code, performance and security revealed an overall clean bill of health for the Payment Practices Reporting service, but there was a fundamental platform issue – it had been implemented on the Heroku cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) rather than GOV.UK PaaS as required by the TCoP. Based on this finding, BEIS updated Shout’s initial scope of work to include migration to GOV.UK PaaS.
The technical audit also confirmed that the service had passed a GDS Assessment at Alpha and Private Beta. Although no further formal assessment was required, Shout still needed to adhere to the GDS Service Standard.
With the technical baseline complete, Shout ran an onboarding process to transfer full knowledge to the Shout team. Structured workshops, documentation walkthroughs and desk research, supported by phone calls with outgoing BEIS contractors, gave them a solid grounding.
Platform Migration
The top priority for BEIS was for the migration to GOV.UK PaaS to be completed during Public Beta. The Shout team created a detailed plan to avoid operational disruption and to transfer all submitted reports without data loss. The team completed the migration out-of-hours, successfully maintaining full report and data integrity. The migration led to a low-key transition to Live and full decommissioning of the Heroku PaaS.
Continual Improvements
Post-Live, Shout provides maintenance and enhancement to continually improve the service. One innovative change was implementing the first ever integration with a new authentication mechanism developed by Companies House. Users can submit artefacts to prove they genuinely represent the company on whose behalf they are using the service.
Another valuable change related to the method for qualifying companies to amend errors on submitted reports. BEIS originally expected this to be a rare occurrence, so agreed a manual approach; users would flag an error to BEIS via the service, BEIS would instruct Shout to remove the submitted report, then the company would submit a new version. The volume of errors and requests turned out to be far more than BEIS expected, so Shout wrote a small archiving application in NodeJS allowing the BEIS Payment Practices Policy Team to self-serve and deal with the removals in-house.
The Shout team is always on hand to discuss new requirements and suggest the best ways to implement change.
Other service updates that have kept the service in peak condition include:
Policy changes
Amending cookie management in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Technical Updates
Addressing a PostgreSQL database version end-of-life by upgrading, testing and validating on GOV.UK PaaS
“The most valuable suppliers focus on outcomes and benefits rather than just outputs, and collaborate with our in-house teams in an open and transparent way whilst holding themselves accountable to their deliverables. Shout fits that bill perfectly. For over three years, they have quietly and competently supported the Payment Practices Reporting service such that it just ‘works.’”
The Outcome & Benefits
Since engaging Shout to manage the Payment Practices Reporting service, BEIS has had a reliable and consistent supplier. The comprehensive initial audit report gave BEIS confidence that Shout had the necessary technical capability and the business acumen to maintain full compliance.
Identifying and moving the service to GOV.UK PaaS halted unnecessary investment in a non standard cloud platform, creating a more supportable and affordable way forward. From Day 1 of Live, the service could support over 15,000 businesses for reporting and unlimited query and analyst users.
Shout has delivered changes on time, to specification and budget, in turn saving BEIS time and effort; the archive self-service feature alone means the Policy Team can do in a few clicks what used to take days.
BEIS’s Innovation Culture Lead commented:
BEIS is a central government department with a multi-million-pound IT portfolio supported by a range of suppliers.
The most valuable suppliers focus on outcomes and benefits rather than just outputs, and collaborate with our in-house teams in an open and transparent way whilst holding themselves accountable to their deliverables. Shout fits that bill perfectly.
For over three years, they have quietly and competently supported the Payment Practices Reporting service such that it just ‘works.’ User adoption has been high in all three categories and the service is underpinning important supplier assessments by public sector buyers and other organisations across the country.
Shout is a valued Small and Medium Enterprise, with this engagement also boosting enterprise and showcasing the UK as one of the best places in the world to start and grow a business.
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