The Environment Agency transforms regulatory services within Government powered by Azure Data and Power Platform

The Environment Agency’s priority is to create a better place for people and wildlife. Part of their work involves the administration of permits and regulatory permissions for citizens and businesses. To work more effectively, the Environment Agency embarked upon a strategy of transformation to modernise and consolidate its technical estate. Although the programme is ongoing, it has already brought wide-ranging benefits.

The Environment Agency (EA) is an arm’s length body, sponsored by the United Kingdom government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), with responsibilities for the protection and enhancement of the environment in England.

“We are hugely ambitious about how we will regulate in the future,” states Gillian Pratt, Deputy Director of Future Regulation at the EA. “But at the heart of our work is the impact we have on people and the environment. We don’t just do this because we are a regulator. We do it because we want to protect and enhance the environment.”

The future of environmental regulation in the UK

To ready itself to be the regulator of the future, the EA began a digital transformation programme in 2019.

“Digitalisation is really important to the EA,” says Chris Cope, Digital Programme Director at the Environment Agency. “It’s about the data we hold and how we then enable access to that data. But it’s also about simplifying the user experience – which is important for those we regulate and how we engage with our communities.”

“Historically, we have been very reactive. We want to use our data and intelligence to become more proactive, so we can use our resources better, target our investigations more intelligently and actively predict risk and prevent breaches and environmental damage.”

The limitations of legacy technology

Across the EA more than 100 different applications are in use, including more than 20 different applications used in the permitting service alone.

Change to these applications was difficult, with quite often basic requirements taking many months to be delivered. If further changes were required, that work went to the back of the queue. As well as slowing down work, this landscape of patched and augmented systems created a very complex environment.

The disconnect between business need and application delivery is not unique to the EA, of course. At DEFRA, to close the gap and enable business-led innovation, the government department selected Microsoft Power Platform for no-code and low-code application development.

“We wanted to consolidate our technology stack,” says Tim Skaptason, leading the architecture for the Regulatory Services Programme at the EA. “The general move in DEFRA to use Power Platform fits really well into that approach. We can build configuration-driven applications, be more efficient and help the business move faster with changes in regulation.”

What’s more, Power Platform matched the EA’s philosophy around digitalisation. Chris Cope confirms, “From a digital engagement perspective, it’s really important for people in the EA to have ideas and for us to be able to do something with those ideas.”

Digitalising permit activity

The EA manages the permits of individuals and organisations across many different licencing areas. This permitting activity was the first area of focus for modernisation.

“Until recently, we’ve been working with systems that were up to 30 years old,” explains Martin Jenkins, Digital Transformation Manager in the National Permitting Service at the EA. “We had real problems controlling and gathering data, interfacing with our applicants and telling our colleagues what we were doing. We were constantly seeking improvements. They often led to another patch on an old system because it couldn’t adapt. Now, we can be much more dynamic in meeting business needs.”

The new approach uses a portal approach based on Microsoft Azure technologies linking in with the DEFRA customer identity system. Information captured on the website might flow through a Power App or directly into Microsoft Dynamics. From there it is available to Microsoft Dataverse, Azure Synapse Analytics and other integrated Azure data and analytics tools. It can be presented in Power Apps or Power BI reports and dashboards to EA users and workflows can be automated using Power Automate and other Azure tools.

“We’ve been using some of this since December 2022 and fully operationally since May 2023,” reports Martin Jenkins. “We can already see improvements in the speed at which we can move through workloads and in the clarity of information to all users. It’s been brilliant.”

“We could see a ten to fifteen percent resource saving. In the teams directly dealing with applications, that time saving may be as high as 80 percent in the end-to-end assessment. That time will be freed up to do more proactive work,” he adds. In this way, the digital transformation is helping the EA become a better place to work by empowering people who review applications to use their time on more rewarding work.

Improvements benefit EA customers

“Everything we do is user-centred,” says Chris Cope. “And the reception from users has been stellar.”

100 percent of users polled said they could see the benefits of the new system, the data is better and they are satisfied with system functionality.

Chris Cope explains, “We think there is the potential for the improvements we’re making to save time for our customers; that is, the organisations and the people which interact with us.”

Rolling out across the Environment Agency

There are internal savings too, not least from the streamlining of the IT estate.

“So far, we have replaced five or six applications to digitally transform permitting. We are on course to replace 40 systems in total, each with a cost of £150k on average,” states Chris Cope.

It’s a fantastic example of being able to do more with less: as well as bringing data together and all the advantages that brings, it will deliver significant cost savings for the EA over the long term.

Work has already begun to rollout a similar approach in other business areas. “We have started with a billing and charging service that is closely aligned to permitting. But we have more than ten billing and charging capabilities doing similar things, so our consolidation approach will be the same,” advises Chris Cope.

This creates scope for workflows to be optimised using Power Automate. “We’ll take exactly the same approach across our operations so that we can get a better understanding across the organisation,” Chris Cope explains. “We can automate triggered processes between teams.”

A common data platform makes innovation easier

Having made data more consolidated and accessible, the door is open for the EA to innovate with that data. In Humberside, a climate change team looking at carbon capture wanted to model potential using a digital twin of the environment.

A digital twin is a virtual model of a real-world system, process or product. This makes it possible to use the digital twin to model scenarios, look into the future and test for outcomes before going live and implementing changes to the original.

“Typically, in the past, we’ve looked at things in the context of water or waste or fisheries or whatever. Now, with the data brought together, we are able to take a wider approach to the environment and a more ‘whole catchment’ approach,” explains Chris Cope.

Tim Skaptason enthuses, “One of the reasons we’ve been so successful with implementing the digital twin pilot project on Azure is because we have a lot of the right infrastructure in place. Azure Data Lake and Azure Analytics services have made it so much easier for us to create quickly. We were able to deliver the project much faster. Instead of spending two months of a five-month project on data architecture, we could deliver it in a matter of days. We could push 95 percent of the funding into building the digital twin instead of the underlying capability. We were able to focus more on outcomes.”

Chris Cope emphasises, “By using digital twins like this, we can start to model and predict the future for the benefit of the environment.”

Get the data platform right first

The team agree that their approach of getting the data architecture right upfront – using a combination of Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Azure – is key to their success.

“We didn’t want to build a nice new digital frontend on a mess of a backend,” states Tim Skaptason. “We focused on getting the data right and getting the right underlying technologies in place first.”

“Everything we’re building is for automation and consolidation,” agrees Chris Cope, “That’s only possible if you take a strategic approach to how you build out. We don’t want to build on quicksand – our approach ensures we have a firm foundation to realise our ambitions.”

He adds, “Having taken that approach and got the foundations right, we can now develop much quicker.”

An improved quality of data

This success has further ramifications for the EA. Tim Skaptason explains, “Taking this approach means we won’t need to transition architecture in the future. Our biggest worry is how to migrate our historical datasets.”

The EA has tackled data quality in a number of ways. For new data, APIs enable cross referencing with other data sources – for example, checking new organisations against their Companies House listings. For historical data, the team use the data and analytics platform to run scripts on any ingested data to check for data quality and gaps. Data quality is reported through Power BI so it can be assessed and addressed by business users. When they are happy with it, quality steps and validation are automatically applied and the data migrated. Further down the line, tools in Dynamics will help users to assess record quality and dedupe.

It puts the EA in a much better position to handle and integrate future data sources from elsewhere in DEFRA, such as environmental monitoring sensor data which could help with compliance.

The partnership with Microsoft

The continual development of the Microsoft stack enhances the confidence the EA team have in the data platform. It is very much a partnership.

“Working with Microsoft helps us to see further into the future; to see how the tech is developing,” states Gillian Pratt. “Microsoft is helping the Environment Agency to make good tech choices that will stand the test of time.”

Being better with data

“We’re already seeing how our data joins up and the opportunities that gives,” says Gillian Pratt. “It’s putting us on the front foot so we can be the risk-based regulator we want to be.”

Chris Cope sets out the scope: “Every day we have Environment Officers going out to do the work, we have applications for permits coming in, we have investigations carried out. We want to use all that data to have a much better understanding every day.”

“How are we going to use that data to benefit the environment?” asks Tim Skaptason. “Automated pipelines for drawing out and storing that data. AI services to become more predictive, especially in terms of risk. Automated compliance checks using decision engines. Instead of grappling with data, we can divert all that time to benefit the environment.”

Future ambition: Responsible AI

As the agency begins a wider rollout of the technologies and integrates more fully across its services, it is already looking to the future and how to benefit from Microsoft’s responsible AI.

“We know that some of the organisations we regulate are already using artificial intelligence. We’ve got to be at least up with them, if not a step ahead,” states Gillian Pratt. “We’re not there yet, but with Microsoft’s help we will be.”

It’s a future vision that also excites Chris Cope. He says, “We’re just starting to see the AI opportunity. For example, using Azure OpenAI to question the data. Obviously, there are some considerations around accessing and using data responsibly but it will be completely game changing. We’re just starting to build that capability out and it’s going to enable a complete transformation of how we use data within the EA.”

Gillian Pratt concludes, “We’ll be able to put a bigger picture together, with broader context, and start to understand the drivers that cause people to take decisions that aren’t necessarily the best ones for the environment. This way, we can proactively help our environment, the amenities it provides, the health benefits it brings and our citizens.”