Case Study

Support the UK government’s management of its Parliamentary business

18
Agencies & Public Bodies
2,000
Staff

About the client

A central office in UK Government, supported by 18 agencies and public bodies, consisting of nearly 2,000 staff ensures the effective running of Government.

The Client

The challenge

A vital part of each Government delivering on its manifesto pledges is to be able to manage the progress of its bills through parliament and to ensure that the voting intentions of Government MPs are understood and addressed.

The client government office provides the secure and highly specialised system the MPs and Whips use to manage this process. The original system, called PAWS (Pairing and Whipping System), was reaching end of life, so the challenge here was to create a replacement service that built on the success of the original system and extend its capability to allow MPs and their Diary Secretaries to submit absence Slips.

The solution

The Solution

Like most Government systems, PAWS is unique in its requirements. Having worked on the previous system, Triad established a strong and successful working relationship with the client and gained valuable knowledge and experience of what was required. Following strict government procurement rules, Triad were again chosen as delivery partner for this high profile and critical Parliamentary system.

Working as a fully integrated collaborative team with client’s staff, Triad’s solution made extensive use of Office 365, SharePoint Online and Microsoft Azure PaaS components (Web Apps and SQL Azure), to quickly and cost effectively deliver a new cloud solution with a government digital services compliant (GDS) user experience (UX).

Used directly by MPs and by the civil service teams, it was necessary to provide two separate user need focussed UXs. A simple, rapid and intuitive process for MPs to follow, and a more flexible process to meet the more complex, analytical and management needs of the civil servants. Rigorous security audits and testing were a vital part of the process, because, as you’d expect from a critical government system, security was paramount.

The result

Fully aligned to the government office’s cloud strategy, as well as its GDS UX and delivery strategy, the updated system is more secure than the previous one and allows the client better control over the system and the technical environment.

The new and updated parliamentary Slipping system has streamlined the Slipping process and removed some of the manual steps, allowing MPs and Diary Secretaries to submit, track and manage the process themselves. While the PAWS system offers a simplified, secure and flexible system that meets the needs of both user communities in a way that works best for them.