 |
Solidsoft is the first company to be awarded Full Government Gateway Partner status within the Government e-Delivery team’s (EDT) Government Gateway Alliance Programme (GGAP). GGAP’s objective is to establish and formalise key partnerships with IT and business suppliers to allow them to: integrate with and deliver our common infrastructure products and any supporting solutions direct to their new and existing customer base within Government, and assist the EDT in the innovative delivery of the Transformational Government Agenda. |
The EDT acknowledges the added value that Solidsoft is able to contribute working alongside the EDT to deliver Government Gateway services to the EDT’s customers. Solidsoft will help enable the EDT to gain additional channels to drive the take-up of the EDT products and services to a greater number of government departments.
The GGAP is designed to provide a formal structure for the interaction between the EDT and all of its partners to ensure mutually beneficial outcomes. EDT’s work with partners has focused specifically on technical deliverables. The GGAP will now take a more holistic approach to partnering, providing professionalism to all partnering work encompassing both the traditional Government Gateway core function but also looking at the delivery of innovation within the context of the Transformational Government Agenda.
EDT describes its partnership with Solidsoft as “A relationship in which both parties seek out mutual benefits by working together within an agreed and structured approach, beyond that of a normal commercial nature”.
Solidsoft and the Government Gateway
Government Gateway is part of the critical central infrastructure that enables secure transactions and the delivery of government services to take place electronically. It acts as an intelligent hub; providing authentication services, verifying the integrity and validity of submitted transactions from citizens and businesses, and routing them to and from appropriate government organisations. It provides the infrastructure for the effective sharing of information, whilst enabling efficient management of security and privacy, as appropriate.
During the lifetime of the Gateway solution development Solidsoft has frequently engaged with the Gateway team to provide project and consultancy services. For a significant part of the Gateway lifetime Solidsoft provided the majority of the development team for Gateway enhancements. Our role has included helping to deploy Gateway solutions in places like Romania, Croatia and Egypt.
In December 2006 the Government Gateway exceeded 10 million active enrolments, a record of almost 50% year-on-year monthly comparison increase (December 2005/December 2006). The latest figures show that the number of submissions exceeded 15 million and a 70% increase year-on-year monthly comparison increase was recorded.
In addition to the direct engagement on Gateway Solidsoft provides an end to end service built on the DIS (Departmental Integration Server – Gateway) which includes a pre-build questionnaire, support for the EDT process and complete documentation, as well as the technical consultancy to build and integrate the DIS with its business processes.
The solutions cover integration with products like SX3 e-Services modules, a car parking integration with a financial system (on-line payments), streamlining license and application processing, Council Tax, Housing Benefits and various citizen e-Payment installations for a large range of applications.
Solidsoft’s GGAP Accreditation
| Solidsoft has created a Gateway Authorisation and Registration product called AIM (Authentication and Identity Management) for departments and local authorities. AIM provides a solution that implements all of the Gateway interfaces and relevant UIs to enable a government organisation to simply include Gateway Register authentication services for its portal – it takes away the pain of coding to Gateway. To watch an interview with Liverpool City Council on the benefits they have received from using AIM click HERE. |  |
Solidsoft’s credibility, capability, technical aptitude and commitment to working closely in partnership with EDT and the Cabinet Office all are significant factors in meeting the stringent GGAP criteria and achieving the Full Government Gateway Partner accreditation.