Digital Toolkit Pre-Engagement

Introduction

The Digital Transactional Toolkit is an Azure cloud platform (PaaS) that enables NI Direct to deliver online services to a number of departments by developing a set of custom components that can be reused by all. The technical design of the Digital Toolkit platform is referenced in Appendix A.

Funding

The DTT is owned by Digital Transformation Services (DTS) team in DOF Enterprise Digital Development (EDD). DTS currently support 2 funding models

Core Funding – for the development of DTT Enterprise cloud services or components that would benefit many business areas across NICS.
Project Funding – for the development of DTT Enterprise cloud services which are bespoke to a particular business area

Important

If a requestor for change believes a change or new service should be core funded, they should clearly articulate how this would benefit others on the Change Request form. It is the DTS Product Owners decision if request for new services or changes to existing services will be Core funded.

Engagement

The following flows illustrate the process for by which the requests for new service or changes to existing services enter the Stiona delivery backlog.

Request for a new service

Process for Change

* The ROM cost estimate applies for 3 months.

** Projects are scheduled in the order that funding is confirmed.

Stiona resource will not be mobilised until funding has been secured. It is understood that business areas must submit a business case in order to secure funding to deliver a service. Stiona can provide a top-down Rough Order of Magnitude (-25% to +75%) estimate at this stage for business case. It is important to note that this estimate will be a range in order to express the uncertainty in this figure. It is a business decision should they wish to submit the higher or median figure into the business case.

Delivery phases and outcomes

Stiona use an agile delivery methodology aligned to the Gov.Uk service design principles with the addition of a Pre-Discovery phase to support the NICS procurement requirements. The following outlines the phases and their deliverable

Phase	Required Actors*	Activities	Outcomes
Pre-Discovery	Business project team DTS Product Owners Stiona Senior Team	Workshops with Business & NICS IT teams or other suppliers.	Understanding of high-level scope to give ROM cost and milestone estimates for bus case
Discovery	Stiona Delivery Team Business project team	Workshops, Building of Delivery Backlog features and Infrastructure	Scoping document (see template in Appendix D).
Stiona Alpha	Stiona Delivery Team Business project team	Design, Development and Stiona QA.	Show and tells to demonstrate progress and track status and change.
Business Alpha	Stiona Delivery Team Business project team	Business Acceptance Testing, Training, Other non-functional Testing (eg PEN Test)	Business Acceptance test plans and execution, Business process alignment and training.
Live	Stiona Delivery Team	Release to Live environment	Live service
Beta	Stiona Delivery Team Business project team	Warranty checks for 2 weeks	Enhanced support for 2 weeks post live. After 2 weeks, support will revert to the DTT Managed Service.

* Additional actors may be required depending on the understanding and complexity of the business requirements

Roles and Responsibilities

Stiona’s role as a technical supply line into a project. Stiona will not be delivering the following items but expect a business project team/sponsor to manage and deliver the business project plan. This should include (but not limited to):

Business project team checklist

Agreeing scope and making decisions on behalf of all customer stakeholders – Stiona technical staff will not seek a consensus view from all stakeholders, but will expect the Business project team/sponsor to make decisions required throughout the project. Any delays due to time taken waiting on business resource to make decisions may incur additional charge.
Ensuring the service features and supporting processes conform to any NICS policies including
- Information Security and Assurance.
  - The business should have checks in place to ensure the information that is being sourced and uploaded into the DTT Azure cloud does have the appropriate security classification.
  - The business will conduct a DPIA and organise Penetration (PEN) Testing and any other IT Health checks or documentation required by NICS policy.
- Should Stiona be required to create RMADs or any other risk assessment documentation for the new service, this will be additional and should be called out as a requirement upfront.
Business Process mapping and preparation of business processes to align to the new service.
Business Acceptance testing – preparation of testing scripts and their execution
Change management within the business and managing the funding of additional changes required and prioritisation of change against existing scope.
User Training – the preparation and execution of user training to ensure operational readiness for the new service.
Infrastructure – should the business require an additional DTT instance or a change to existing DTT instances, this should be ratified with ITAssist who manage the subscription and governance processes for the Azure platforms.
Central Editorial – should the business require a citizen website which is accessible through NIDirect, it is the businesses responsibility to engage and agree wording and structure of public facing web pages with the Central Editorial Team. Should you require Stiona’s assistance with this, this should be distinctly called out in business requirements.
Accessibility – DTT public facing services are built to be WCAG2.1 compliant, should the business require a different level of accessibility – this should be called out in business requirements.
Non-functional requirements – should there be specific non-functional requirements for performance, segregation, data retention etc – these should be called out in business requirements.

Note

The timeline for business side activities should be shared with Stiona and the DTS Products team early in the delivery timeline and tracked in project update meetings.

Communications and Escalations

DOF Digital Transformation services are the owner of the DTT contract with Stiona, therefore approve all requests for Stiona resource within the contract.

The Stiona senior team will be involved in Pre-Discovery, and will continue to oversee the Stiona Delivery team throughout.

Process for Change

Stiona use an agile delivery methodology, therefore will require regular touchpoints with the business project team to demonstrate progress and clarify requirements. The details of these touchpoints will be documented in the scoping document delivered from the Discovery Phase.

DTT Product Owners

Name	Email	Phone
Emma Penney	Emma.Penney@finance-ni.gov.uk	07922 869896
Tracey Kelly	Tracey.Kelly@finance-ni.gov.uk	07866 998415

Stiona Senior Team

Role	Name	Email	Phone
Stiona Enterprise Architect	Jason Malone	jasonm@stiona.com	07796174337
Stiona Security Architect	Stuart McLean	stuartm@stiona.com	07966255887
Stiona Delivery Manager	Sinead Malone	sineadm@stiona.com	028 9592 4767