Cegeka’s App Enables Major Telecom Operator to Digitally Transform the Lawful Disclosure Process, Improving Business Performance and Compliance

The client

The company is a multi-national telecommunications company and a supplier of fixed-line, broadband, and mobile services in the UK. They provide information technology and communication services to corporate and government clients on a global basis.

The business challenge

Under the UK Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA 2010) and (as of 2016) the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA 2016) regulations, UK law enforcement can request a range of communications data in support of criminal, public safety, and fraud investigations.

To meet this requirement, the telecom operator conducted an industry procurement exercise, and ultimately selected Cegeka because of its mature, robust, and feature-rich lawful Disclosure Management System (DMS), used by more than 4,000 Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) officers around the world.

Cegeka was also chosen to support this business process improvement initiative because of its recognition as a trusted service and delivery partner by the client, the wider UK LEA community, and the UK Home Office.

The solution 

In late 2015, Cegeka began supporting the telecom operator’s DMS project. The work assignment represented a complex project for both Cegeka and the company in terms of the additional enhancements required for the DMS application. This included the development of a new web-service-based mediation system, which was required to facilitate communication with their various back-end data retention data sources. 

The results

Working with several of the telecom operator’s cross-functional project, technical, and disclosure teams, the Cegeka work effort involved the development of 27 new DMS application end-user features over a 20-month period.

The scale and complexity of the development work for both DMS and the company’s in-house mediation system is evidenced in the fact that the User and Operational Acceptance Test phases of the project took four additional months of comprehensive and rigorous testing. 

Finally, on December 20, 2017, after 415 working days since work began, the company’s DMS application became operational.

Continuous innovation

DMS enhancements have continued since the completion of the initial engagement, including a new machine-to-machine application protocol interface (API) upgrade, which was required to support direct LEA connectivity. This new project presented several technological challenges for both Cegeka and the company’s new mediation system and infrastructure platforms. 

The new requirements of the API interface resulted in further enhancements to the DMS application, bringing the total new user interface functions to 30. Through close collaboration across multi-teams, Cegeka and the client were able to go live successfully with the new DMS/API release on September 17, 2018.

The latest DMS deployment went live in February 2019. Subsequent feedback from the telecom operator and the LEA community has been very positive, and the new functionality well received. The DMS application has remained both robust and stable throughout and, to date, receives more than 50,000 disclosure requests on an annual basis from law enforcement. These results demonstrate the importance of the DMS to the lawful disclosure and specialist telecoms teams in the prevention of crime, saving lives, and supporting the criminal justice system.

Throughout the project, the company was extremely impressed with the level of professionalism, flexibility, and delivery capability shown by the Cegeka project team, most especially in their UK communications data domain experience and their overall knowledge of the IT systems and requirements of the UK LEAs, UK telecom operators, and UK government legislation. The client also appreciated the strong cultural relationship that had developed during the project between the two organizations and regarded Cegeka’s overall project approach and attitude as exemplary supported by an impressive, collaborative culture.