The UK Health Security Agency (formerly the Department of Health and Social Care) is a UK Government Department that is responsible for protecting every member of every community from the impact of infectious diseases, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents and other health threats. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has played a central role in the UK’s fight against the virus by introducing the Test and Trace service.

Together with the UKHSA team, BJSS rolled out its Enterprise Cloud to speed up the delivery of the Azure and AWS based-cloud platform that now underpins NHS Test and Trace.

Challenge

NHS Test and Trace is a programme of work within the UKHSA to help halt the spread of Covid-19. For the programme to succeed, it needed to be delivered securely and at pace, all while meeting the anticipated demands on the service.

The service needed to be supported by cloud technology bringing existing hosting and tooling within the control of NHS Test and Trace. UKHSA did not have the resources available to deliver a new platform to the scale required within the tight timeframes.

Solution

BJSS was successful in securing the opportunity to deliver the Azure and AWS-based Test and Trace cloud platform for UKHSA.

To achieve this, we introduced the BJSS Enterprise Cloud. This framework enables the UKHSA to vend new accounts at pace and provides a single pane of glass for all its accounts. It also provides thousands of hours’ worth of code, which compressed down the delivery timescales from months to just a few days.

When the programme puts forward new requirements for the platform, we can stand up new services and vend new accounts exceptionally quickly. All of this is achieved without compromising the platform’s security posture.

Benefits

Accelerated delivery
Similar cloud deployments to this usually take months to deliver. The BJSS Enterprise Cloud contains thousands of hours’ worth of code that has helped the UKHSA to stand up the Test and Trace cloud platform in a matter of days. All the necessary guardrails have been built in, resulting in a cloud platform that has been securely delivered at pace.

Ability to quickly scale
The ever-changing nature of the pandemic has resulted in fluctuations in demand on the Test and Trace service. As a result, it needs to be quickly scaled up and down in line with demand. Without BJSS Enterprise Cloud, it would have taken UKHSA longer to deploy new workloads and stand up new services. 

Tailored to meet demands
We tailored the BJSS Enterprise Cloud to meet UKHSA’s specific requirements by folding them into the platform. While we can continue to add requirements to the platform, UKHSA also has access to the Infrastructure as Code to quickly make any changes autonomously. It also allows them to iterate on top of the platform and evolve it in line with changing requirements.