The Technology Strategy (Part 4)

Over the last three blogs we have discussed the importance the Digital Services Technology Strategy has in delivering continuous improvement and technical excellence, the significance of enabling a culture of technology explorers in Kainos and the role this plays in the delivery of progressive technology for customers, and the impact of networks and storytelling and looks at how the voice of our people impacts globally.

In the final part this four-part interview series, Kainos Digital Services CTO, Aislinn McBride, in conversation with Sophie Fullerton, discusses what the success of the Kainos technology strategy looks like and looks at how we delivered success for the NHS.

What does the success of the technology strategy look like?

When our technology strategy is working well the ultimate impact is long term, with our customers and our people. We engage with customers early in projects, push the boundaries in what they feel can be achieved, and therefore increase the value they achieve in the impact they could have. We bring innovative technologies to the fore in new and exciting ways, and we do this as a team of technology thought leaders across Kainos with a positive impact across industry.

What sets Kainos technology careers apart from the rest?

Having personally been in Kainos for over 15 years, the journey has been unique because of the group of incredible people I have worked with. It is an ambitious organisation with a long-term view based on a growth to sustain impact and careers. We provide interesting career journeys from new entrants into technology from a range of diverse backgrounds through to experienced individuals who bring something different to the organisation. This can be seen in our support for tailored personal development for individuals, our communities and networks, and the challenging work we bring to the fore. We are deliberate about supporting individuals on their learning journey, e.g., to date we have helped over 800 of our people achieve certifications with AWS or Azure.

How does being a thought leader align with Kainos culture?

There are many factors to our culture, but inclusion is central to our technology strategy. Ideas and solutions are at their best when we are building them from the whole team, not just individuals. This is supported by our values of creativity, determination, cooperation, honesty, and respect. We deliberately work in the open, supporting communities of joint interest and actively look for ways to connect the dots across the organisation to ensure innovative ideas are heard and supported.

What part does thought leadership play in delivering a successful technology strategy?

The backdrop to the technology environment today is furious change. To create great impact for our customers and interesting careers for our team we need to learn quickly from the forefront of change. This is not going to happen by waiting for others to prove ideas first, we need to get creative and bring thought leadership to our customers' problems.

In digital services, this means exploring, understanding, distilling, and deciding what is relevant and what can have the most impact for our customers. It is not just about the shiny latest technology such as quantum or NFTs. We are continuously prioritising technologies that can be used creatively to solve real problems efficiently. Our technology thought leaders bring these technologies and ideas to the fore and this can come from any role or any part of the organisation.

What impact does the technology strategy have on Kainos customers?

A great example of success with our customers is represented here in the work we did for NHS Digital during COVID-19.

Back in March 2020, NHS Digital began to lead the design, build and deployment of the digital infrastructure needed to support the emerging COVID-19 testing facilities and technologies. The initial focus was getting keyworkers access to regular testing to enable them to continue to go to work. Test sites were not feasible for regular keyworker testing, so an alternative approach was required. A small team of 6 Kainos staff joined the programme and in just 6 days delivered the new Digital Home Ordering service. Since then, the service has evolved to support different testing technologies for multiple use cases including home based asymptomatic testing, school children and their ‘bubbles’, elective care testing and international arrivals. At its peak, one million orders were placed in a day and to date over 100 million orders have been processed.

Our successful delivery of home ordering was followed by Kainos delivering additional applications such as the Results Service which is responsible for processing all citizens' test results across the nation. Our team of engineers have worked to further improve this service. Using AI integration, the test result service provides approved AI vendors with an image of an LFD test to determine the result. The Results Service provides on demand results information to several consumers including the Covid Pass application via the NHS app. At its peak, the service processed over 2 million test results per day whilst in parallel provided test result data to the NHS App used to generate a citizens NHS Covid Pass. Since December 2020, the Results Service has processed over 500 million records in total. Throughout its peak the service remained stable which is due to our investment in the application of AWS cloud native technology, serverless-first event driven architecture and the wider, complimentary ecosystem.

It is a really exciting time to be working in technology; the world continues to change at a phenomenal rate, expectations of digital products and services are increasing, and organisations are constantly adapting; this creates a high demand for the creative use of technology. Kainos are constantly working to satisfying these outcomes; through great people, supported to continuously develop and work as one team.