Sustaining and Modernising Tax Services

TDS provides long-standing embedded engineering and programme delivery support to the UK’s Central Government tax collection agency, working across multiple linked programme areas including new feature build programmes, live service run and change engagements and human centred design discovery phases.

The Challenge

Digital services must stay reliable, secure and accessible for millions of taxpayers and businesses, while continuously evolving to meet changing legislative, technical and government service standards. Live services demand constant monitoring and rapid issue resolution; incident-response systems must operate under strict risk controls; and integration work — such as migrating APIs from RAML to OAS — has to happen without disrupting services already in use. Alongside this sit ongoing accessibility obligations under GDS guidance, and a need to act continuously on user research and customer journey data rather than treat accessibility as a one-off fix.

Solution and Implementation

Strategic Approach

TDS embedded consultants directly into agile delivery teams across three linked areas:

• Digital Live Services Run: TDS consultants keep live digital services running smoothly  by triaging and fixing bugs, and driving continuous improvement so services stay as easy and efficient as possible for taxpayers. This includes ensuring services follow the latest Government Digital Service (GDS) guidance and patterns, migrating APIs from RAML to OAS, and resolving live issues arising from platform faults or service bugs. Accessibility is improved on an ongoing basis by implementing fixes identified through the latest accessibility audits and acting on continuous user research and customer journey data.
• Making Tax Digital:  TDS consultants are an integral part of agile delivery within MTD.  Our consultants help with understanding complex systems, defining approaches to mitigate risk early, and maintaining product quality throughout the software development lifecycle. Development spans front-end, back-end and QA testing, with environments built and managed through AWS Workspace and Docker-based test execution.
• Government Gateway: TDS provides further delivery and engineering capability into the Government Gateway workstreams, the identity/authentication service underpinning digital tax services.

Key Deliverables

• Ongoing incident triage, bug-fixing and continuous improvement across live digital services
• API migration from RAML to OAS without disruption to live services
• Software development and deployments to MTD strategic objectives
• Test strategy and execution across front-end, back-end and cloud services
• Accessibility fixes delivered against audit findings and GDS compliance requirements
• Delivery and test support to the Gov Gateway workstream

Results and Outcomes

• Continuity of critical live tax services for the UK public, with issues identified and resolved before they affect service availability
• Demonstrable accessibility improvements informed by audit findings and user research
• Reduced delivery risk through early-phase test strategy and a broad testing footprint across front end, back end and cloud
• A long-standing, trusted embedded presence within Digital Delivery contracts, spanning multiple linked programme areas