Today, in Computer Weekly magazine, we were excited to see exclusive news coverage of the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) large scale modernisation project for the UK’s benefit systems - a project of gargantuan proportions that we are proud to have supported. Indeed, it is described by the journalist as being believed to be the largest project of its kind in Europe, seeing the department move an entire application estate off the VME platform to a modern, open systems platform.
With so many citizens reliant on the services of the DWP, the decision to modernize - by migrating 11 core legacy applications onto a new modern open systems (VME-R) platform - was bold but entirely sensible. The applications migrated support DWP’s benefit paying systems, which are fundamental to paying out £150 billion a year to more than 15 million people in the UK. In other words, each of the systems that DWP identified as part of the project provides a mission-critical service for citizens in the UK and, as such, has national ‘critical asset’ status. The pressure was on!
I’m proud to say that Advanced’s application modernisation practice rose to the challenge and worked closely with the DWP to provide the professional services expertise and software tooling required throughout project and helped ensure that it ran on time, within budget and with zero disruption to the service. All of this despite several of the key applications having to be migrated during a lockdown situation due to the pandemic! The ultimate success of the program was testament to the expertise and professionalism of the Advanced team and I applaud them for it.
In addition to this being the largest modernisation project ever in Europe, it is also the biggest deal in Advanced’s history. A lot was on the line, but we did it, and I encourage you to read more about it here.