A New Regulation System

As a national Government agency the Housing Corporation was responsible for the provision and regulation of social housing in England until the end of 2008.

Following on from the Government's 2007 Cave Review, which suggested that fundamental changes were needed to better serve the needs of the sector, the Housing Regeneration Act (2008) made provision for the division of the existing Housing Corporation into two separate agencies that were both launched on 1st December 2008:

• Homes and Communities Agency brings together the role of the English Partnerships' key housing and regeneration programmes as well as the Housing Corporation's investment activity.
• Tenant Services Authority (TSA) has taken over the Housing Corporation's responsibility as the regulator for social and affordable housing in England and will focus on raising the standards of service delivered to affordable housing tenants.

In addition, the Housing Regeneration Act introduced a new regulatory framework that will increase the powers of the TSA by making it the single regulator for both the local authority and housing association sectors in England within two years of its establishment; the Housing Corporation was previously only responsible for regulating housing associations.

Sopra Group successfully designed and delivered the TSA's new Regulation System to very tight timescales.

Regulation System Development (RSD) Programme

The Housing Corporation had been managing its regulatory process through a number of disparate applications that were difficult to use and expensive to maintain; individual departments were effectively operating in silos, which impeded a cross­departmental flow of information. A new system was clearly vital to the success of the TSA as the existing group of applications would not provide the flexibility required to manage the new agency's additional regulatory powers.

Prior to the creation of the TSA the Housing Corporation launched the Regulation Systems Development (RSD) Programme; the agreed IT strategy to take the new TSA forward was to replace the existing set of regulation applications with a Microsoft CRM platform with Windows SharePoint Services. Having worked closely with the Housing Corporation since 2002 as its preferred IT supplier, Sopra Group was the natural choice to deliver the RSD solution.

Solution

Phase One – Updating the Registry

• The first step was to update the Registry ­- the information recorded here is business critical as it supports all of the TSA's regulatory functions - and Sopra Group was involved from the outset, from documenting the business requirements right through to the design, consolidation, migration and delivery of the newly unified Regulation application. 
• Sopra Group also further enhanced the new application to include additional regulatory processes, with key information relating to the regulation of each organisation now maintained in one place that can be accessed securely by all areas of the business.
• The first phase of the solution was delivered to tight timescales in order to ensure all systems were fully functional prior to the TSA 'going live' in December 2008.

Phase Two – Replacing the Investment and Financial Regulatory Systems

• The second phase of the project 'went live' in April 2009 and focused on the replacement of the existing IRS (Investment Regulatory) and FRS (Financial Regulatory) applications. Sopra Group was again involved in all aspects of the project including: CRM customisation and data migration; systems integration; integration of SharePoint to provide a document repository; Acceptance Testing Support; Information Archiving and Standard Reporting and Data Analytics.

Benefits

The integration of CRM with the SharePoint Repository, which holds both internal and external documents, has enabled truly collaborative working by simplifying document management and making information available securely to staff across all areas of regulation. Previously disparate applications have now been brought together within a unified Regulation application which affords the TSA a number of benefits including:

• Greater Flexibility -­ the new system offers more flexibility, enabling users to react swiftly to new and evolving regulatory approaches and to offer greater responsiveness and consistency of service to regulated bodies. 
• Efficient Platform - the new application is easier to use and facilitates information sharing across the organisation ­separate departments no longer operate in silos.
• Improved Management Controls - through a greater visibility of delivery against targets and regulatory plans.
• Streamlining of the Corporate Governance Processes ­- the new application provides a consistent process that simplifies the handling of Corporate Governance issues arising from changes to regulatory organisations.

Future Developments

As delivery timescales were so tight, and the TSA did not actually require immediate reporting capability, the Reporting and Analytics part of the application is currently undergoing User Acceptance testing and is expected to 'go live' in 2009/2010.  Sopra Group continues to support the TSA's Regulation System through a managed service agreement.

"Once again we have worked in partnership with Sopra Group to deliver a successful business-critical project." Senior IT Manager, Tenant Services Authority.