Ofsted Reports
Ofsted’s digital services are vital for public engagement. In 2015, Zoocha became their lead Drupal developer, supporting legacy systems while building new GDS-compliant services.
The ask
Ofsted’s requirements were twofold:
1. Provide robust support for their Drupal 6 legacy architecture during a sensitive supplier transition.
2. Design and build new public-facing services on Drupal 8, fully aligned with Government Digital Service (GDS) standards for accessibility, security, and service design.
This included a secure cloud hosting environment, advanced search capabilities, and scalable infrastructure capable of handling hundreds of thousands of records with frequent updates.
The approach
Drupal 6 support
Zoocha delivered full support and maintenance for Ofsted’s Drupal 6 platform, including remedial security and DevOps work, content management support, and ad hoc feature development to ensure stability during transition.
New service design and drupal 8 development
The methodology and approach were agreed in consultation with GDS and included:
- User research and testing employing a range of methodologies including remote (online) user testing, face to face interviews with users from each segment/ persona
- UX design collaboration with the in-house Ofsted designer
- Drupal 8 and SlimPHP development to create a new 'micro services' architecture in line with GDS recommendations
- Full API development for serving nearly 0.5m data items with high levels of daily change
- Refined and optimized the data import process to be able to handle several hundred thousand childcare providers rapidly
- Advanced search functionality to allow for localised based searches and simple filtering across a range of attributes
- New cloud infrastructure on AWS for the Beta project that is highly available, auto-scaling, performance optimized, secure
- Security at the heart of the project
- Agile development methodology in line with GDS service design
- Adopting the GOV.UK branding guidelines for Drupal 8 sites, along with ensuring forms meet the standards articulated within the GOV.UK service manual
- Built to last, and to be continually extended over the coming years
The results
The new Ofsted platform successfully transitioned from fragile legacy systems to a secure, high-performing Drupal 8 environment, delivering better services for the public.
Key achievements included:
- Apache Solr integration enabling fast, geospatial, and faceted search
- Successful completion of Alpha and Beta phases under GDS methodology
- Independent certification for security and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance
- Positive stakeholder and public feedback on usability and reliability
- Mobile responsive design, broadening access across devices
The outcome was a modernised digital estate, built to last secure, user-focused, and scalable for continuous extension in the years ahead.
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