Overview
The HMRC required a new site for all their staff to be able to report any incidents, issues, or wrong doings in a confidential manner. The system needed to be very secure so that each user only had access to their own reports and there needed to be a top level management structure who could review all reports in order to assess them, add comments, allocate a category to each report and determine whether the subject of the report warranted taking further.
The Build Phase
After an initial requirements session Solvd quickly produced a working prototype using Microsoft ASP.NET to help the customers ascertain certain detailed requirements of the system. Solvd created a role structure which determined what screens each role could see on the site. To make the system even more secure Solvd developed a unique identifier id for each report and an encrypted password function for each person using the system. Included is a reminder option for people who have forgotten their password which locks users out after a certain number of attempts. Solvd then developed a management reporting system so that certain roles could view and update reports. This was enhanced with a detailed search facility enabling managers to search using different categories such as user name, report name, type of reports and date criteria. Solvd also provided a Management Information Statistics (MIS) function for the system to help the customers keep a track on numbers of incidents reported and under what category. The system was developed rapidly and Solvd were on hand to help ensure the system was implemented smoothly and on time.
The Result
The customers were extremely pleased with the system and provided some excellent feedback. They were particularly impressed with the way after a only an initial 2 hour requirement session Solvd were able to produce a good first cut demo in a quick time so that they could present it to their senior management. Additionally, the system went live with no issues and to this day has proved a great success.
Feedback
I was the Project Manager responsible for delivering the ‘Confidential Electronic System for Reporting Wrongdoing’ (CESRW) to the Department in 2009. CESRW was a web based system accessible by all 100,000 HMRC staff via the Department’s intranet through which individuals could make confidential reports to Internal Governance officers of suspected criminal activity by colleagues.
Solvd Ltd were engaged in early December 2008 to build the CESRW application. The finished application was to be delivered to the project by the end of February 2009 to enable final testing and installation to be completed for ‘Go Live on 31st March 2009.
Solvd met all deadlines for interim and final delivery.
Those that worked with the Solvd team on this project were very impressed with their ability to quickly understand the business issues and requirements, together with their responsiveness; this was instrumental in providing confidence to the Department’s management that the project would deliver on time.
A key concern was knowledge transfer from the Solvd team to the applications management team who would be responsible for managing CESRW once it was in Live production. The Solvd team worked closely with the applications management team and provided additional support during business testing and the installation on the Live environment – sometimes this was long after normal working hours. The applications management team were very happy with the support they received from Solvd.
The system was supplied by Solvd with no known errors and no problem tickets were raised during the first three months of Live operation (the period of the Post Implementation Trial).