Bichard 7 modernisation, powering justice and public safety
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) uses an application called Bichard 7 to receive court hearing outcomes. It then adds them to the Police National Computer. It processes 7,000 to 10,000 cases a day and its users include the police and HM Revenue & Customs.
Bichard 7 provides access to all 47 police forces across England and Wales so they can correct data errors and complete any manual actions as needed. Without the system, police forces would manually track arrest warrants and bail denials.
We came on board to help MoJ with application modernisation of Bichard 7, migrate it onto AWS and provide an improved 24/7 support service through our managed service.
Modernisation to deliver efficiency and security
As part of this application modernisation project, we designed a unique transition plan for Bichard 7 based on our knowledge of the AWS transfer process.
To find out user needs and process requirements we watched how its users interacted with the system. This helped us design a new transition process, one that was reviewed by relevant teams and delivered with no impact on existing users.
To minimise the existing manual intervention needed from police forces while shortening data correction times, we introduced:
- a monitoring system using AWS Cloud Watch
- improved auditing logs to make sure all user interactions are logged and searchable
- a user management portal that eliminates the need for police team leads to make service requests
- 2-factor authentication to enhance security and remove the manual password reset process
During this transition all runbooks and playbooks were reviewed, upgraded and moved into GitHub. Knowledge articles were also created to help service desk handlers quickly resolve user queries.
Managed service for uninterrupted support and improvement
Our fully security check-cleared managed services team provides support and continuous improvement. This managed service consists of 24/7 365 days a year Level 2 support with a combined Level 2 and 3 during standard working hours.
With great support and guidance from Made Tech’s managed services team, I’m delighted to say this project has been a huge success. A great level of dedicated work has helped us modernise, migrate to AWS and rollout ongoing improvements to meet user needs.
Dom Tomkins, Ministry of Justice Service Owner
Our support increases following a significant release or if external events need it. By working closely with police users and policy makers we schedule technical changes and service improvements at times that work for them. Our managed services team are responsible for operating and delivering:
- knowledge management
- incident management
- problem management
- proactive monitoring and reporting
- service requests
- capacity management
- vulnerability management
- service reporting
We also make regular changes to the service to improve user experiences and respond to changes in government policy. To do this, our analysts track data collected through the service desk to identify incident trends. User researchers also work closely with 30 representatives from English and Welsh police forces to inform future work and get early feedback.
Finally, all testing and releasing new software is now automated, with different processes used for a “small change” versus a “major release”. This way 100% uptime is maintained during deployments and there’s no impact on users or the public.
Lack of modernisation? Our managed services take away the stress of maintaining and supporting live digital and data services, applications and cloud infrastructure.
In the need to do more with less, organisations are turning to technology to help them fight crime, respond to emergencies and keep people safe.
