~ Written by Yannis Kafantaris

Public Sector Digital Transformation

Through our participation in these 3 digital transformation initiatives, Public Sector bodies are able to purchase our specialist QA and Testing services in a far more accessible and agile way. 

One of the overriding goals of the government’s digital transformation is removing the barriers to better technology. As Government Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Andy Beale said in his recent blog post, “Reuse is a big part of what we want to achieve, and it’s more than just reusing technology. We want people to reuse each other’s work, like a well-run discovery phase or pilot project, or a well-designed policy. When someone, somewhere, does something well, we want to find out about it and make sure it’s recognised and replicated as widely as possible.”

So, let’s take a look at these frameworks to clarify the categories we are involved in and what that means in terms of what we can deliver to the Public Sector through these service access points.

DOS

Digital Outcomes and Specialists is a dynamic style framework designed to assist Public Sector organisations in buying, designing, building and delivering their desired digital outcomes using an Agile approach, by procuring the appropriate specialist from a pool of to deliver Agile software development. Sogeti is delivering services in 3 categories, Digital Outcomes, Digital Specialists and User Research Studios.

Digital Outcomes

In this category Sogeti will create expert teams to build and support government digital services such as a beta test of an NHS appointment booking system.

Digital Specialists

Sogeti will provide individual specialists such as product managers, quality assurance analysts and cybersecurity experts, to deliver a specific goal with pre-defined deliverables and outcomes for a particular Public Sector service, programme or project.

User Research Studios

Sogeti will interact with end-users and focus groups, interviewing them, carrying out usability testing and observing and recording them as they utilise designs, prototypes and live government services in order to determine the quality of the service and the overall customer experience.

In these ways we will be supporting the Public Sector by providing easy access to our digital services in multiple UK locations with the flexibility and agility to meet their digital project goals.

G Cloud 9

The new iteration of G Cloud is based on extensive user and buyer feedback to improve upon the previous version.  

The categories of service have been updated and now fall under three headings:

• Cloud Hosting
• Cloud Software
• Cloud Support

G Cloud 9 is the only current iteration, it is not overlapping with any past or future iteration as has been the case in the past.

Sogeti has been successful in all 15 of the areas in which we submitted, and they are as follows: 

1. Application Security Testing - to be implemented with Black Duck OSS
2. Application Security Testing - Fortify On-Demand
3. On-Demand Cloud Service for Environments and Tools
4. Functional Test Automation
5. Functional Testing
6. Managed Testing Service
7. Performance Testing
8. Test Assurance
9. Test Maturity Assessment
10. Test Transformation Services
11. User Acceptance Testing
12. Product Integrity
13. Sogeti Studio - DevOps Quality Services
14. Sogeti Studio - Mobile Testing Services
15. Sogeti Studio - Web Testing Services

Crown Commercial Service 

As we saw in an earlier blog “Announcing the New Crown Commercial Service Quality Assurance and Testing for IT Systems Framework Agreement” the Test, Design and Consultancy Services expired on March 31^st and the Crown Commercial Service replaced it with the more efficient and modern Quality Assurance and Testing for IT Systems Framework Agreement, bringing it into alignment with the goals of digital government.

Sogeti is providing services in 7 areas:

1. Test, Design & Consultancy Specialists
2. Automation, Agile & Dev Ops
3. Load & Performance Testing
4. Functional Testing
5. Infrastructure Testing & Environments
6. QAT Management
7. Strategic QA Consultancy 

Test, Design & Consultancy Specialists

In this category Sogeti will be providing support for the Department’s transformation programme, offering our QA specialists to augment the government’s digital transformation programme’s testing needs. Delivery will be consolidated across teams, delivering maximum benefit to users while controlling costs and reducing risks. Given our place in the Capgemini Group with a Global testing practice of 12,000 qualified staff of whom 600 are UK-based we are able to provide expert assistance alongside existing teams, as test experts supporting design, development, testing, implementation for a number of central government organisations to deliver digital transformation with an Agile approach.

Automation, Agile & DevOps

We are already utilising Agile, DevOps and complex CI, tool heavy teams at a wide number of clients.

Taking a shift left, look right approach to agile testing we are committed to Test Driven and Behaviour Driven development. Our strategy is to create test plans and designs during the development phase and sprint backlogs, alongside test/development pairing, identify testing opportunities as early as possible in the development lifecycle and use best-practice open-source tools.

As budget is of paramount importance, we can make use of our highly scalable, cost-effective UK Test Delivery Centre, which offers public sector organisations access to over 200 ITSQB certified test professionals who are experienced in public sector delivery.

Load & Performance Testing

In order to align with the goals of the Public Sector organisations that procure our services we produce high-level, risk based performance testing strategies and test designs that fully reflect the projects’ milestones.

Our own industry standard methodologies including TMap (Test Management Approach) and TPI (Test Process Improvement) enable us to deliver world class performance testing across all components.  

Functional Testing

Sogeti’s Functional Testing approach includes a full requirements review, an assessment of the project schedule and the creation of a comprehensive test strategy. Then, to ensure all issues and defects are tracked we create a defect management process with associated tooling, supporting defect review boards, testers and suppliers. To mitigate project risk, it’s important to run regular risk-based workshops and adapt the strategy to match the workshop findings.

Infrastructure Testing & Environments

Our ISQTB infrastructure testers have a wealth of experience working in large scale infrastructure projects. These projects involve testing infrastructure of new data centres, delivering LAN, WAN, telephony, video services and Windows 10 apps, which is similar to the requirements of the projects being undertaken by the Public Sector organisations for their current digital transformation.  

QA & Testing Management

In addition to deploying our full range of Quality Assurance and Testing services we have access to the expertise of our global research and development community of over 120 technology leaders from Sogeti worldwide, SogetiLabs. At the forefront of technological advances, SogetiLabs carry out deep research into trends such as machine learning and wearables.   

Strategic QA Consultancy

As a strategic QA consultancy Sogeti is committed to working as an extension of our clients’ teams, helping them to adopt the right principles, improve product quality and enhance overall project delivery. Our Managed Test Services provide flexible, best-in-class test strategies that reduce your total cost of ownership. Our goal is always to deliver continuous quality improvements and innovation that will have a positive impact on your business. To this end our TMap and TPI methodologies bring discipline, provide insight into testing maturity, industry benchmarking and a roadmap to more efficient testing.  We focus on automation wherever appropriate to bring significant savings and reduce tester fatigue and eliminate the potential for human error. 

Services That Are So Good…

To echo the Digital Marketplace Director, Warren Smith, when he set out his vision last year, we hope, “to help the public sector buy what it needs to deliver great digital services…services so good that users prefer them.”