Crown Prosecution Service rebuilds legacy apps with a citizen dev team

Challenge

Cloud migration: No in-house development, no problem

In 2013, the UK government introduced the Cloud First policy to encourage public sector organizations to choose cloud solutions when searching for new or existing IT services.

For CPS, this meant migrating all its on-premises tools to Microsoft 365. “We had over 50 local applications built using no-code that we now had to rebuild to meet the government’s cloud policy,” said Elizabeth Thomason, Head of App Development.

Additionally, since many of these tools were now accumulating large amounts of data, the existing data storage was not fit for purpose.

Elizabeth reviewed a variety of development tools and platforms for the modernization project but none of them met the CPS’s requirements. “We’ve always outsourced our development,” Elizabeth explained. “At the time all our inhouse processes and teams supported that model so we had very little experience to draw from. Therefore, to ensure we could be both secure and cost-effective, we needed a platform that allowed us to use our in-house capability and future-proof our apps.”

So CPS decided to look at low-code.

Solution

From internal business tools to critical external apps

When CPS adopted OutSystems, two people were trained in the platform. One of them was Elizabeth. “Both my colleague and I came from HR, but we love messing around with technology. We’d previously created productivity tools with Excel and VBA, used some no-code configurables, and some basic front end coding.”

To support Elizabeth, OutSystems provided a package of customer success services, including training, support, and architecture advice. CPS could also access the extensive online training that OutSystems provides for free.

Elizabeth began her developer journey by creating small apps that CPS staff needed for daily tasks. Her first solution was a resource and efficiency measure app used daily by 40% of the agency’s employees. In the first year of operation, it processed over one million records!

As Elizabeth grew confident about what she could do, so did the scope and scale of the apps delivered. Her team is now using OutSystems to create internal lines of business apps as well as external facing to improve users experience when interacting with the organization, such as:

Results

More capacity, more accessibility, and more skills

Six years later, CPS has delivered over 30 applications, each built on average in four months. Colleagues across the agency have been so impressed with the new apps that the new low-code development team has been flooded with requests to improve the agency’s operational efficiency.

As a result, Elizabeth’s team has grown, with 16 people now working with OutSystems. “We operate in multidisciplinary scrum teams that involve business analysts, researchers, delivery managers, and developers,” described Elizabeth.

OutSystems low-code also has brought another crucial capability: enhanced accessibility. As a government organization, CPS must adhere to specific accessibility standards. The public agency worked with OutSystems to improve the platform’s accessibility features, which are now available to all OutSystems customers.

“It’s great to see this kind of partnership where vendors listen to customers and take their feedback to improve the product,” Elizabeth shared.

Today, OutSystems is no longer seen as just a citizen developer tool. Elizabeth has consistently invested in her team’s training and certification to maximize the platform’s value to CPS.

And she couldn’t be more proud of her team’s accomplishments. “We’ve moved from not having internal development capabilities to developing core functionality for our central casework management system.” She concluded: