Context
GOV.UK OneLogin is a national-scale identity platform supporting millions of users across multiple government services, delivered by hundreds of practitioners across multiple teams.
The programme operates in a highly regulated, high-risk environment where architectural coherence, delivery confidence, and operational resilience are critical.
The strategic challenge
As the programme scaled, senior leadership needed confidence that technical strategy, architectural decisions, and delivery approaches would remain sustainable, secure, and aligned across teams.
The challenge was ensuring strategic coherence and risk control at scale, rather than increasing delivery capacity.
My role
I was engaged as an independent senior technical advisor, operating above hands-on delivery.
My role focused on technical strategy, programme-level assurance, and decision support for senior product, delivery, and engineering leadership.
Strategic contributions
- Assessed and challenged technical strategy across architecture, delivery, and operations
- Shaped strategic decisions around resilience, scalability, and security
- Surfaced material delivery and operational risks and translated them into actionable leadership decisions
- Provided independent assurance on architectural direction without owning implementation
- Supported governance through clearer decision ownership and cross-team alignment
- Advised on incident response strategy and longer-term operational improvements
Outcomes
- Reduced delivery and operational risk through strategy-led assurance
- Improved confidence in architectural direction among senior stakeholders
- Clearer prioritisation driven by risk-informed decision-making
- Greater consistency and scalability across multiple teams