The UK Home Office is a ministerial department that is responsible for immigration, security and law and order. From 2010 to 2015 it underwent a radical transformation to become a digital department, which has revolutionised the way it interacts with the public and its customers.

BJSS provides a modern Managed Service to the Home Office, supporting several of its core digital services, including Managed Reporting Appointments, Atlas, and the Business Event and Streaming Service. This flexible and adaptable managed service is helping to ensure the stability and continuous improvement of these vital public services.

“BJSS has provided fantastic support throughout a period of transition within the Home Office. We made the ambitious decision to move on from our legacy Immigration Caseworking system, and BJSS has been reliable, thorough, and proactive in providing their support and expertise. They are a fundamental reason the transition has been a success.”

 

Reece Flemming,
Service Manager, Home Office

Challenge 

According to the ONS, 91% of all adults had recently used the internet, with almost all adults aged 16 to 44 (99%) being recent internet users. Today’s citizens are consuming more digital services than ever before.

This shift in behaviour, combined with a need to improve the quality and efficiency of its services, led to the government implementing Digital by Default – an initiative designed to make all public services digitally accessible.

To align with this initiative, the Home Office underwent a significant digital transformation programme. The programme saw a complete modernisation of the department’s infrastructure. This included the modernisation of the Home Office’s immigration case working system – Atlas and the development of cloud-native applications such as Managed Reporting Appointments (MRA) and its Business Event and Streaming Service (BESS).

With several new digital services in place, the Home Office required a modern managed service to support and continuously improve the applications.

 

Solution 

BJSS played an integral role in the development of Atlas, MRA and BES and was selected to take on the managed service for each of these systems. This allowed for a smooth transition from the build phase into the managed service.

Our ISO27001 accredited Managed Service team initially took on the support for MRA. This tool is used by 14 Home Office reporting centres and is designed to track the status of illegal immigrants living in the UK. We ensure the stability and continuous improvement of the tool by providing incident resolution, problem fixes, release management and minor enhancements.

Having been involved in the build phase of Atlas – the Home Office’s new immigration caseworking system – our Development team handed over to our Managed Service team who took on the management of the system’s interfaces. Atlas is tightly integrated with several other systems across the Home Office, and our team plays an essential role in ensuring that data is fed into Atlas correctly. This service is highly collaborative, with the team working with numerous different suppliers to ensure the stability of Atlas.

Additionally, our Managed Service provides out of hour support for the department’s Business Event and Streaming Service (BESS).

 

Benefits 

A collaborative service
The BJSS Managed Service team works closely with the Home Office infrastructure team and other third-party suppliers to make sure stakeholder needs are met. When transitioning the Atlas and MRA from build into managed service, we worked collaboratively with other suppliers to gain a detailed understanding of the applications. Our managed service team has been proven to resolve some of the most complex challenges, often remediating issues out of our scope.

Flexible and adaptable
As is the case with all BJSS’ Managed Services, the service we provide to the Home Office is both flexible and adaptable. We’re able to pull resources from our talented pool of engineers and technologists to help resolve some of the most complex challenges. The Managed Service team can evolve and scale at pace in line with the Home Office’s requirements.

Continuous improvement
The BJSS Managed Service team plays a central role in continuously improving Atlas and MRA. By blending traditional ITIL service management approaches, with cloud and leading-edge software development techniques, we’ve helped to rapidly enhance the applications. This continuous improvement has helped to optimise costs, maintain security levels, and evolve the applications in line with user needs.