UHKSA

Enterprise Scale Architecture Mapping in the UK Health Security Agency

Joining with two other departments to form UKHSA and effectively responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, required Public Health England to have crystal-clear visibility of their application and infrastructure estate, and significant scalability to rapidly deploy new services and meet unprecedented demands.

CloudKubed securely deployed a full-stack application and infrastructure dependency mapping tool across the entire PHE estate to provide clarity of the entire existing IT landscape, allowing them to regain control of their enterprise infrastructure and make informed, data-driven decisions throughout a crucial and complex business transformation.

About UKHSA and Public Health England

Formed as part of the UK’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UKHSA combined Public Health England, Test and Trace and the Joint Biosecurity Centre into a single Government Agency responsible for reducing health inequalities, protecting the nation from public health hazards, and responding to public health emergencies.

Now part of UKHSA, Public Health England (PHE) played a crucial role in the pandemic response and the fight against COVID-19. With 5,500 staff, operating out of eight local centres across four regions, the agency’s technology infrastructure was crucial to delivering essential health services throughout the UK in extremely challenging circumstances.

The Challenge

The challenges of responding to Covid-19 had a substantial impact on PHE’s systems. They had to scale to meet unprecedented demands and rapidly deploy new services to combat the pandemic. Without clear visibility of the application and infrastructure estate, PHE faced significant challenges in meeting these new and urgent requirements.

PHE engaged CloudKubed to provide visibility and insights into their infrastructure and applications, and, ultimately, to help them regain control of their technology landscape.

In addition to the COVID-19 challenges, PHE faced an upcoming merger with Test and Trace and the Joint Biosecurity Centre, requiring a high-level application portfolio and enterprise architecture overview to enable long-term future transformation.

“CloudKubed started working with PHE in the height of the pandemic and through their extensive knowledge, experience and professional attitude they delivered a clear view and assessment of our technology estate. This enabled us to make informed decisions and progress with our transformation roadmap whilst we were working on the pandemic response and demands”

- Deputy Director of Portfolio and Strategy, Public Health England

The Solution

Working closely with key technology partners, CloudKubed securely deployed an application and infrastructure discovery and dependency mapping tool across the PHE estate.

With large amounts of sensitive data stored on the agency’s systems, CloudKubed engaged with PHE security teams throughout the process to ensure any deployments maintained and met strict security and compliance standards.

The infrastructure maps visualised application-to-device relationships; mapping applications to servers, servers to switch ports, and users to devices and applications. Devices could be located and updated automatically, streamlining the process of documenting physical, virtual, blade, clusters, switches, and any other device types.

In-depth reporting facilities provided by CloudKubed enabled PHE teams to fully understand the complex application interdependencies and connections across the entire organisation.

The reports were further enhanced by working closely with PHE stakeholders to construct a comprehensive application portfolio, including: application owners, dependencies, business capabilities, and business criticality, mapped to each service within Public Health England.

With complete oversight of the application and infrastructure estate PHE, supported by CloudKubed, could then focus on rationalising their device and application portfolio. The CloudKubed team also mapped IT components and lifecycle status to business applications to understand technical debt and align PHE’s technology with their target operating model.

The Results

Enhanced Clarity and Understanding

CloudKubed provided Public Health England with clarity of their existing IT landscape, allowing them to make informed, data-driven decisions throughout a crucial and complex business transformation, merging with Test and Trace, and the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) to form the UK Health Security Agency.

Enabling Continuous Transformation

The CloudKubed team delivered a solid foundation for future transformation initiatives and application modernisation, identifying key areas for rationalisation, optimisation, and simplification.

CloudKubed provided insights that allowed UKHSA to strategically allocate resources as they strive to deliver world-class digital services to the UK and improve public health outcomes in the future.

Actionable Insights for an Enduring Technology Strategy

The UK Health Security Agency are now able to create and implement a modern and enduring technology strategy and a resilient, future-focused technology operating model that enables the ongoing success of the agency and improve public health services throughout the UK.

“As part of the formation of the UKHSA, it was important that PHE refreshed the mapping of its enterprise architecture, in order to ensure that this was safely transitioned and evolved to meet the needs of the new agency. We enlisted the help of CloudKubed to achieve this, they integrated closely with our programme, helping us work through a complicated discovery and stakeholder engagement exercise and implementing new tools. As a result, we had a highly successful outcome and are in a strong position to evolve these capabilities from the legacy organisations into world class technology capabilities for UKHSA.”

- Director of Technology, Public Health England