A swift, efficient migration for Swindon Borough Council, with ICT Revolutions
- Customer
- Swindon Borough Council
- Sector
- Public sector
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Partner
- ICT Revolutions
- The project
- Replaced its Adult Social Care case management and finance systems, live in September 2023, with ICT Revolutions as implementation partner.
Swindon Borough Council replaced its Adult Social Care case management and finance systems, with ICT Revolutions as implementation partner and Hopp as the data migration platform. The new systems went live in September 2023.
Challenge
Swindon Borough Council began the tender for its new Adult Social Care Case Management and Finance system in autumn 2022. ICT Revolutions carried out data discovery between September and December 2022, and was then appointed implementation partner, providing systems integration services including data migration. Contracts with all vendors were signed by the end of January 2023.
ICT Revolutions had researched data migration software for eighteen months before the project began. In UK public sector system replacements, data migration is one of the biggest risks, with several sources of unpredictability:
- Specialised data engineers. Migration developers with domain knowledge and experience of the source and target databases are hard to find.
- A customer who can test. A customer able to test each iteration of loaded data and report defects quickly and precisely is rare, and Swindon did exactly that.
- Local data experts. Staff who know the legacy data quality issues and can manage the repairs. Swindon had these skills.
- Code development. Most migrations need unique code to handle the legacy systems, which takes time, creates unpredictable costs and is a common reason projects run late.
ICT Revolutions found hidden costs, a demand for scarce and expensive specialists, long start-up times and little evidence of success in the field among the tools it assessed. Then it found Hopp.
Process
ICT Revolutions found a proven, tested and referenceable product, and a team that understood its goals and offered the partnership and flexibility to succeed.
In 2021 it ran a migration using traditional methods alongside Hopp as a trial, to check the fit of both the technology and the people. It used the trial to complete the information governance, cybersecurity checks and tests needed to bring the software into a public sector environment that handles some of the most sensitive data in the UK.
A core requirement was that data, or views of data, never leave the customer's ICT perimeter, and that every activity follows local data management and security policies.
Timescale
Swindon's timescale was a key concern. Many felt it could not be done, and fewer than half of comparable implementations had gone live without adding test rounds.
The data discovery gave the migration workstream a head start:
- Identification of key data stakeholders
- Analysis of legacy data stores
- A migration issues log
- Sign-off requirements
- A draft migration plan
Hopp presents migration results in a web portal. Mappings can be updated and data reloaded quickly, and changes tested through the portal, with every issue visible so progress can be tracked. This let the plan follow a blended agile approach, with two-week releases focused on specific areas of the migration, instead of testing only at the main milestones.
Infrastructure
The main migration server was already in place from data discovery. The infrastructure for the new target systems could only be specified once the suppliers were known, and part of it was not fixed until the end of January.
The contingency in the plan was used up at the very start of the project and work had to be rescheduled. The blended agile plan made that easier, and the speed of mapping in Hopp let the workstream make up the lost time before the test migration.
Working together
Many key project roles were held by ICT Revolutions staff, alongside key people from Swindon Borough Council.
Issues were handled by running interim loads between the main test migrations. With the quick turnaround of mapping in Hopp, interim migrations could be reloaded up to three or four times a day when needed, and the time lost early on was caught up before go-live.
Outcome
Typical migrations involve four test rounds over six to eight weeks, plus a final dry run. Despite the infrastructure delays, 72% of the data loaded in the initial test, so issues were found early. Swindon Borough Council and ICT Revolutions worked directly with the migration through the portal, with transparency and quick issue resolution. The full end-to-end migration was completed in around seven months, with three rounds of testing.
The main conclusions:
- Data discovery first. A thorough data discovery before implementation was extremely valuable and should start any future migration.
- Efficient delivery and engagement. Hopp significantly increased the efficiency of the migration and greatly improved customer engagement through the portal. Swindon's timescale would not have been met without it.
- A clear methodology. Everyone involved had clearly defined roles and responsibilities, which kept communication and decisions clear under pressure.
ICT Revolutions is committed to a long relationship with Hopp Tech and is planning more joint projects, migrating from virtually any source to any target with the same method and toolset.
