Expertly supporting digital services past live Home Office

Live services need maintenance. We protected and improved 9 government services with 99.99% uptime and no security breaches.

The challenge

Building excellent digital services is only one aspect of an organisation’s transition towards digital transformation.

Once services are live they need careful management by an experienced team to protect them against the growing risk of cyber attacks. They also need updating in line with changes to legislation, organisational policies or working practices.

In 2018 we were awarded a contract to provide maintenance and ongoing support to 7 important Home Office services, some of which were highly sensitive. These are:

• Apply for a prohibited weapons licence
• Report online terrorist materials
• Complain to UK Visas and Immigration
• Biometric Residence Permit enquiries
• Ending a tenancy due to immigration status
• GRO Certificate Enquiries (backend system)
• Landlords Checking Service

The contract was to maintain and improve the services with new features or design improvements.

Taking a security-first approach

For more than two and a half years we ensured all 7 services were operational, that data was securely transferred to the back-end and they were protected against security threats.

In addition to monitoring by the Home Office’s central cybersecurity department, we deployed our own security monitoring services at the container and library level for extra protection.

We checked for known security threats against a vulnerability database and resolved them according to risk level. Serious risks were resolved immediately with the majority of risks resolved in under half a day.

In [DATE] following our successful management of these services we were asked to take over management of another 2 live services:

• Report Modern Slavery as a First Responder
• Appeal Rights Exhausted Checking Tool

An example of a live service monitoring tool used on the project

Upskilling staff for a smooth handover

All of our services were live and operational for the duration of our contract with an average uptime of 99.99%. During that time we had no security breaches.

We also made iterative design improvements and built new features which you can read about in our report online terrorist materials, UKVI complaints and report modern slavery as a first responder case studies.

When a policy change meant live services would be managed in-house going forward, we supported a smooth transition to the new team.

“Marvell Consulting are very responsive. They’ve really worked with internal teams to increase our knowledge and capabilities.” Lead Developer, Home Office