ICO

Background

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website is a critical public service that helps millions of citizens, organisations and public bodies understand and comply with data protection law. At times of national change, demand can increase dramatically, placing enormous pressure on the technology and the teams responsible for keeping services available.

Our relationship with the ICO began at exactly that point. As GDPR came into force, unprecedented demand exposed weaknesses across the platform. Performance deteriorated, infrastructure had to be scaled aggressively simply for the site to remain online and operational teams were forced to make difficult decisions about which services could remain available during peak demand. What began as an urgent stabilisation programme quickly became something much broader.

Over the following years, the challenge evolved. The ICO wanted to improve the experience for users, modernise internal ways of working, introduce new digital services and reduce operational complexity, all while continuing to deliver an uninterrupted public service. As Umbraco 7 approached end of life, the question was not simply how to migrate a CMS. It was how to evolve vital digital services without compromising resilience, security or the trust placed in one of the UK's most important public bodies.

Solution

We worked alongside the ICO as an extension of their own digital team, using Umbraco as the foundation for continuous improvement.

We first stabilised the existing platform, identifying the root causes of poor performance across the application, infrastructure and hosting environment. Once reliability had been restored, our focus shifted to understanding how people actually used the service. Joint user research, analytics and usability testing informed improvements to navigation, search and content, ensuring investment was driven by evidence rather than assumption.

From there, we evolved the platform into a suite of more capable digital services. Together we introduced new online journeys aligned to citizens' needs, automated previously manual processes, and embedded modern engineering practices, including continuous delivery, automated testing and security assurance. Editorial teams gained greater flexibility to manage content, while the platform became easier to maintain, scale and enhance.

The migration from Umbraco 7 to the latest Long-Term Support (LTS) version formed part of that wider journey, not its objective. By running the legacy and new platforms in parallel, we delivered the programme incrementally, protecting continuity for a service that organisations and citizens depend on every day while giving the ICO confidence at every stage of delivery.

Rather than simply replacing the CMS, we used the programme to modernise the entire platform. We simplified the Azure estate, strengthened security, embedded infrastructure as code and modern DevOps practices, and created a more resilient operating model that is easier to maintain, monitor and evolve.

We streamlined how content could be created and managed, harnessing Umbraco to transform the editorial experience. Flexible content components replaced rigid page templates, giving content teams greater control over how they create and manage information without relying on developers for routine changes. By improving both the technology and the way people worked with it, we left the ICO with a platform that is simpler to operate, faster to evolve and ready to support the next generation of digital services.

Impact

Today, the ICO operates a digital platform that is faster, more resilient and significantly easier to evolve than the one we first encountered. Response times have improved by 94%, while monthly Azure infrastructure costs have reduced by 50%, demonstrating that strategic modernisation can improve both service quality and operational efficiency.

The benefits extend far beyond technical performance. Editorial teams can publish content more effectively, new services can be delivered with greater confidence and modern engineering practices have reduced operational risk while strengthening security and governance. Instead of continually reacting to platform constraints, the ICO can focus on improving services for the people who rely on them.

Those improvements have delivered measurable benefits for users too. We helped transform the ICO's Subject Access Request process from a paper-based journey into a guided digital service that users can complete in around ten minutes. Within two weeks of launch, submissions had tripled and users rated the new experience 4.7 out of 5, demonstrating how investment in the platform translated directly into better public services.

Most importantly, the partnership has created a foundation for continuous evolution. From stabilising a platform under unprecedented national demand to introducing new digital services and modernising the underlying Umbraco estate, each phase has built on the last. The result is not simply a successful CMS implementation, but a long-term digital platform that continues to support one of the UK's most important public services.