Ofsted Reports
Brief
Zoocha have worked with Ofsted since November 2015 as their lead Drupal developer for most of their public facing websites. The brief was to support legacy Drupal 6 architecture as well as building new sites on Drupal 8.
Solution
Drupal 6 Support
- Full Drupal support and maintenance service for the Ofsted legacy architecture, and infrastructure
- Remedial security and devops work during supplier transition
- Content management support
- Ad hoc feature development
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
Technical highlights
- Apache Solr integration to provide advanced geospatial and faceted search functionality
- Completed Alpha and private Beta phases using GDS approved methodology
- The site has received positive feedback from stakeholders and members of the public
- Security certified by an independent specialist security testing organisation
- Successfully passed independent accessibility testing to WCAG2.1 AA level
- Broader reach through mobile responsiveness
