Case studies.

The challenge

The DMO is an Executive Agency of Her Majesty’s Treasury and are responsible for debt and cash management for the UK Government, lending to local authorities and managing certain public sector funds. They manage the auctions of Gilts and finance Government debt. It is based in the City of London and operates similarly to an investment back.

Actio Consulting UK Ltd were engaged to work on a portfolio of projects focused around reducing risk to the operational activities of the DMO and bringing identified software and hardware back within vendor support. This was a traditional waterfall style environment with control and risk mitigation the key project drivers.

What we did

We were asked to deliver two key projects; one to select and implement a data centre monitoring solution and one to upgrade a key risk management product and associated infrastructure; Algorithmics.

We initiated both projects, writing all documentation from Project Briefs onwards, set up governance Boards and got agreements for resources and budgets. We worked with a team of business analysts to identify all requirements for both projects and got sign off from the SRO’s to move forward with the work. We used the G-Cloud to identify potential suppliers and ran two procurement exercises to bring on board suppliers.

For the data centre monitoring solution, we worked with the chosen supplier to implement the technical element in to the data centre including sensors and alarms. We also created the necessary processes for the management of alerts, including the use of remote monitoring centers and implemented the business change necessary to enable DMO staff to respond to alerts where necessary.

For the Algorithmics upgrade we worked with IBM, the selected supplier and internal resources to upgrade both the underlying infrastructure and the Oracle components in advance of the software upgrade. As the application was a key part of the DMO operation, we took a very risk adverse approach with parallel running and long test phases, to ensure that the system was behaving as expected and returning the correct results.

Results

Both projects were delivered successfully and reduced major risks to the live operations of the DMO. The data centre was brought up to standard and fully monitored and the Algorithmics installation was brought back in to vendor support, allowing the DMO to continue to operate with greatly reduced risk to the public finances.