Department For Work and Pensions
Customer success case study
Connecting government departments to critical training and resources in response to COVID-19
The DWP saw a 10-fold increase of people claiming Universal Credit during the first week of lockdown. DWP needed to upskill a large number of staff rapidly, in order to process this unprecedented level of claims.
Challenges
- Between 16 March to 4 May there were 1.8 million claims for Universal Credit. DWP had to respond to an unprecedented 10-fold increase in claims within one week.
- The initial surge in claims had to be processed and the expected higher volumes going forward needed to be planned for.
- DWP staff had to be rapidly redeployed to the front line and colleagues from other government departments were drafted in to help with demand.
Goals
- To bring other UK Government departments onboard via the existing Invotra Extranet Portal.
- Provide controlled, secure access to training to support the upskilling of staff moved to the front line.
- To allow colleagues from other UK Government departments to rapidly and securely access the latest news, guidance and policies from DWP.
Solutions
- Aside from SaaS user licences, DWP’s use of Invotra’s Extranet Portal capability led to no additional costs as the feature comes as standard. As does Invotra Auth, Invotra’s secure and scalable user authentication solution, backed by AWS Cognito.
- These two features meant DWP could effectively control access to over 10 other UK Government departments and 3,000 government colleagues.
Invotra auth features that helped DWP succeed
Other Invotra Extranet Portal features include:
- Customisable homepage for external users.
- Targeted information architecture based on external users’ permissions.
- Controlled access to areas and sections.
- Control over which apps (Groups, Message Wall, Ideas, etc.) external users can access.
- Control over whether or not external users can access the people, teams or locations directories.
- A multi-device experience, improving communication and increasing productivity.
Additional support and features available include:
In addition to Invotra’s Extranet Portal, the team at DWP had the support and features that the COVID-19 response demanded:
Utilising site sections to create a ‘Universal Hub’ page which was updated daily with key messages and any changes to policies.
- Utilising Invotra Manuals to share policies with secure role based permissions.
- Using Single Sign On (SSO) to ensure seamless onboarding.
- Access to GOV.invotra (Invotra’s extranet portal for government customers) allowed departments to collaborate, communicate, share best practices, ideas and advice.
The end result
DWP were able to successfully process an unprecedented demand of new claimants, and their ability to draw on resources from other government departments via Invotra played an important role.
DWP rapidly expanded access to its training and documentation for new or transferred staff, ensuring employees had the tools they needed to serve the public as efficiently as possible.
Being able to utilise Invotra’s secure extranet capability was a gamechanger for DWP during our COVID-19 response. It meant we could onboard colleagues from other government departments to help us out with the unprecedented volumes of Universal Credit claims received. As always, the Invotra team were brilliant during this period, helping us out at short notice if we encountered any issues and reacting quickly to requests for support.
