Engineering and software testing in BPDTS
Updated 30 April 2019
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Our purpose
Working with other experts at DWP Digital we’re reshaping the digital landscape of UK government. Our people, our biggest asset, use their expertise to help build secure and intuitive digital services used by millions of UK citizens.
We build and test quality, reliable and accessible digital services using a range of software to meet the needs of people using them.
We write code to create applications and infrastructure, with automated and manual testing being used to make sure it works, is high quality and bug free.
We use cutting-edge design, data and a full range of innovative technologies to try out new ideas, experiment, iterate and innovate at pace.
Stuart Taylor, Engineering and QA Digital Service Practice Lead, describes engineering and QA in BPDTS as:
Our engineers work together in multi-disciplinary teams within DWP Digital Group to accelerate the transformation and modernisation of an incredibly complex digital landscape.
We’re actively implementing high quality digital citizen services, ready for today and prepared for tomorrow.
Our customer
With other experts across DWP Digital, we work together in multi-disciplinary teams to achieve shared goals.
This unique relationship means:
- we’ve a detailed knowledge and understanding of DWP’s technology estate that is unrivalled in the market
- we understand and work seamlessly with DWP’s business processes and engineering practices
- we can make long-term investments to build our engineering community’s capabilities and services they offer
- our peoples’ expertise is valued and we’re seen and treated as a trusted partner by DWP Digital – increasingly taking on new, more complex and valuable things to do
We have the agility of a small lean organisation, are able to respond quickly to external changes, deliver value for our customer and stay ahead of the game.
Our people
Based in vibrant digital hubs across the country, we’re embracing agile ways of working to ensure what we deliver meets and exceeds our customer’s needs.
Our people want and need to keep up with fast paced changes in digital technology to be masters of their craft. An excellent range of learning and development is available to tap into, which enables our people to build their skills and develop their careers.
Every one of our people is different. We care about what’s going in their lives and want to help them be happy and healthy, both at and away from work. We value people for their differences and will do everything we can to create a positive, safe and healthy environment for everyone to be themselves at work.
We believe in celebrating successes together, and recognising and rewarding our people for their creativity and commitment.
Our services
Cloud migration
Drive the adoption of cloud-based infrastructure and techniques to deliver operational improvements and efficiencies to core services, using:
- crown hosting
- major public cloud providers
- virtualisation
- containerisation
- infrastructure as code
- platform as a service
Software engineering
Deliver high quality systems, features and services incrementally using agile and waterfall processes, including:
- continuous agile delivery
- test driven development
- continuous integration
- API development
- microservices architectures
- DevOps tooling and approach
- legacy system remediation
DevOps
Enable the accelerated delivery of high quality systems and services through the adoption of DevOps tooling and techniques, including:
- implementing automation tools to support continuous delivery
- implementing site reliability engineering approaches
- reengineering system delivery and governance processes to support a DevOps model
- coaching delivery teams in the adoption of lean delivery
- inspection and monitoring
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
Combining software and systems engineering to build and run large-scale, massively distributed, fault-tolerant systems. SRE ensures that internally critical and externally-visible systems and services have reliability and stability which yield high availability.
It includes:
- maintaining capacity and performance
- implementing useful metrics gathering and alerting to support continuous monitoring
- implementing site reliability engineering practices on legacy systems
- re-engineering system delivery and governance processes to aid site reliability
- coaching software delivery teams in the adoption of DevOps
Quality Assurance (QA) and testing
Assure the quality of new systems, features and services though the adoption of good practice and tools, including:
- test automation tools which support continuous integration and delivery
- test driven development techniques
- performance and vulnerability testing
- user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) testing
Contact centre
Deliver integrated, multi-channel enterprise contact centre capabilities, including:
- voice over IP telephony
- workflow automation
- workload management
- ticket management and routing
- multi-channel CRM
- performance management
- analytics
End user computing
Deliver integrated enterprise-wide end user computing services, including:
- fixed end user devices
- mobile end user devices
- unified messaging services
- application delivery and compliance
- end point technologies
Cyber security
Deliver cyber security solutions and services to protect DWP and its customers from cyber threats, vulnerabilities and data breaches, including:
- firewalls
- virtual private networks
- security infrastructure event management
- advanced persistent threat management
- vulnerability scanning and management
- encryption and authentication
Data centre operations
Deliver large scale data centre solutions, including:
- data centre fabric
- structured cable design
- physical security
- operational process design and operation
- operations management tooling
- infrastructure discovery and configuration management
- network, system and application monitoring and event management
Contact BPDTS
Email bpdts.engage@dwp.gov.uk for more information about our services.