CGI and UK Government: Joining the dots

My working life started as a Civil Servant in 1998 and ever since I’ve been passionate about public service and the power of technology to improve the lives and security of our citizens.

I’m really proud of what we’re doing in CGI and so in this – and forthcoming blogs – members from CGI’s Central Government Business Unit will talk about the work we are doing to modernise the UK, and the difference we are making to society.

Benefitting society: Turning information into intelligence

For CGI, modernising the UK is about making it easier for people to collaborate, joining together systems and teams and enabling them to share information in a secure way. For example, CGI is working to build and maintain a Global law enforcement intelligence sharing capability which will help law enforcements agencies to share information and reduce crime. All part of CGI helping to ‘join the dots'.

Our work has had a transformative impact on public protection in the UK, allowing the police to “join the dots” between different pieces of information and derive intelligence, helping them prevent and detect crime every day. We also work with the National Crime Agency, the crime-fighting law enforcement agency responsible for leading the UK's fight to cut serious and organised crime.

But crime doesn’t stop at the UK border. Today, it is a global digital enterprise. We are now scaling our law enforcement intelligence-sharing capability to the international level, working with governments and police services in other “five eyes” countries to join the dots between national law enforcement services to better prevent harm and protect the public. I aim to share more on this in future blogs.

Benefitting citizens and end users: Making services more modern and accessible

Integration is just one part of what we mean by “joining the dots”. We’re also supporting the government in its mission to make public services more accessible and tailored to user needs. Across government, we’re working to make interfaces and processes deliver the responsive user experiences that people expect today. We’re modernising digital interfaces and we’re introducing digital technology to processes that have always been paper-based.

One area where we’ve made a real difference is the jury summons process for the Ministry of Justice. Historically this was a cumbersome manual process: inconvenient for citizens and a headache for court officials. Now, with Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service we’ve put the users at the heart of the process and using the service standard, made it genuinely digital. It’s making life easier for jurors and it’s making the process work more smoothly, reducing delays that could impede the wheels of justice.

Benefitting the business of Government: Helping government departments do more with less

Our ability to join the dots means we can help public services work more efficiently and achieve more with less. We take an agile approach to development which means we deliver significant improvements quickly and without ramping up costs. Recently, we helped one government department overhaul its core case management system, making it much more user-friendly without having to rip out and replace the system’s legacy core.

We modernised the front-end based on user needs and integrated it with a re-engineered back-end. Using an iterative approach allowed us to identify exactly which back-end technology needed to be retired and we were able to do that in stages. It meant we could deliver a great result for the client and, ultimately for the citizen, in the most cost-effective way.

Making a difference every day

I feel privileged to work for a company that has such a positive impact on the lives of UK citizens and end users. CGI are joining the dots and enabling people to collaborate and benefit from today’s technology in so many ways. Quietly understated, we’re working across government implementing change and actively promoting greater collaboration with government departments and suppliers as an answer to the challenges that face society. Recently, we worked with independent advisory Crest Research to show how joining the dots between the civil and criminal justice systems can help protect victims of domestic abuse. Read the report.

In future editions of this blog, members from around our leadership team will explain how they are making a difference every day.
CGI UK has deep domain experience working with government for over 40 years. We have specific expertise in National Security, Space and Defence working on large, complex, mission-critical systems. Combined with our unrivalled expertise across the criminal justice system coupled with our expertise in the applications layer; I believe we make a real difference to our government clients.