DWP accelerates claims process with Red Hat

The UK’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) says it has accelerated the claims process for 22 million people.

Working with open source software provider Red Hat on an open hybrid cloud strategy, the DWP says it has reduced deployment times for new services from around nine to 10 hours to just 15 minutes – a reduction of up to 97.5 percent.

The DWP is the UK’s largest government department, with more than 93,500 employees. It provides services such as state pensions and a range of worker, disability, and illness benefits. One in three UK citizens regularly claims from the department – and this number rose by three million more in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, after a record surge in unemployment.

Pandemic-accelerated digital transformation

DWP Digital, the organisation’s 5,000-person technology department, historically operated in siloed teams, with isolated processes across its hybrid environment including its multicloud environment, spanning Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.

This, it says, led to complex and redundant procedures for claimants, with applicants often required to provide the same personal information on multiple forms to apply for different benefits. Some services, such as identity verifications, still required paper-based applications which required citizens to visit local offices or send required information via post.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the DWP identified a need to streamline, digitise, and automate processes as it faced a s surge in demand to provide services remotely.

“At the start of the pandemic, three million citizens lost their jobs. We needed to quickly provide benefits to unemployed and low-income citizens to ensure they were paid in time to cover basic necessities, such as housing and food costs,” said Jacqui Leggetter, head of Integration at DWP Digital.

“Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ansible Automation Platform, and Red Hat OpenShift, we succeeded in rapidly pivoting from manual processes to automated, API-based workloads. As a result, we’ve automated the application process for benefits such as Universal Credit – all the way to a claimant’s first payment being issued. This has allowed our team to focus on valuable activities such as employment assistance and coaching, and deliver greater value to the general public.”

Distributed IT infrastructure

DWP enlisted Red Hat to help adopt a distributed IT infrastructure approach, which would provide broader access to data and application programming interfaces (APIs) across its business and technology teams.

The team deployed Ansible Automation Platform along with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift, which it says has resulted in faster deployment times, simplified access to services and reduced infrastructure costs.

“The collaboration between DWP and Red Hat has transformed service delivery for the UK’s 22 million work and pension claimants,” said Joanna Hodgson, UK country manager, Red Hat. “We’ve gone beyond a traditional vendor and customer relationship, and have created a co-located team to innovate on the DWP’s cloud, container, and automation platforms. Along with improving service delivery at a historic moment, Red Hat is proud to see the DWP establish itself as a leader in digital transformation in the public sector – both within the UK and globally.

“The results demonstrate the true value of open source technology in reducing costs and promoting efficiency for organisations in the public sector.”