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# Hosting a modern justice system

DevOps is not a single team. Discover how the UK Ministry of Justice modernizes 7,000 applications by combining centralized Kubernetes platforms with deep empathy and proactive stakeholder marketing.

- **Speakers:** Nevelina Aleksandrova
- **Event:** WeAreDevelopers LIVE
- **Published:** November 10, 2021
- **Duration:** 35:06
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/332-hosting-a-modern-justice-system

## Summary

The UK Ministry of Justice (MOJ) balances centuries-old public service delivery with a sprawling technical estate of over 7,000 applications. While striving to modernize by migrating legacy systems to public cloud environments like AWS EKS, the central hosting team prioritizes stability and security over bleeding-edge trends. To enable this, they engineer centralized infrastructure platforms—including a modern Kubernetes environment, a data analytics hub, and a legacy-transition environment—that abstract underlying complexities so individual service teams can maintain full autonomy over their application logic.

Navigating the inherent tension between standardization and innovation, the MOJ structures its developer tooling to ensure the "pit of success" is the easiest path. This shared-platform architecture demonstrates that a rising tide lifts all boats; when platform experts apply global updates, such as patching an Nginx ingress vulnerability, hundreds of downstream applications are secured without service teams lifting a finger. However, creating an elite internal developer platform requires proactive stakeholder alignment. Operating on the principle that "build it and they will not come," engineering leaders must vigorously market their systems to product managers and financial decision-makers to justify migration investments ahead of time.

Beyond technical evolution, the MOJ advocates for a fundamental organizational mindset shift, asserting that "DevOps is not a person and it is not a team." Genuine DevOps culture demands empathy, requiring specialized application developers and infrastructure engineers to cross-train and understand each other's operational friction. This collaborative foundation seamlessly supports their evolving DevSecOps practices—integrating automated Snyk vulnerability scanning—while also nurturing an inclusive environment where proactive allyship empowers marginalized groups to confidently lead public sector digital transformation.

**Keywords:** legacy system modernization, public sector cloud migration, AWS EKS deployment, kubernetes platform engineering, internal developer platforms, devops culture transformation, devsecops implementation, infrastructure vulnerability patching, stakeholder buy-in strategy, government IT agility, snyk code scanning, docker organization management, technology allyship, centralized hosting infrastructure

## Chapters

1. **Defining modern infrastructure in a government context** (00:02) — How modern infrastructure involves bringing inherited legacy systems into the present century.
1. **Overview of the Ministry of Justice hosting function** (01:32) — The central role of hosting to serve various justice agencies with standardized expertise.
1. **Managing diverse and critical legacy infrastructure** (03:02) — Teams balance the use of modern Kubernetes clusters with critical older on-premise servers.
1. **Strategies for migrating legacy systems to the cloud** (05:45) — Engineers document, automate, and patch older services to prepare them for cloud deployment.
1. **Structuring platforms for new services and data analytics** (08:27) — IT architects organize new applications, machine learning models, and legacy migrations into distinct infrastructure hubs.
1. **Balancing centralized infrastructure with service team autonomy** (09:59) — Standardized deployment templates provide consistency while allowing engineering teams to fully customize their configurations.
1. **Marketing internal platforms to secure user adoption** (13:20) — Convincing product owners and financial stakeholders is necessary before creating new infrastructure.
1. **Shared platform updates for broader organizational security** (16:30) — Centralized management protects individual services from security vulnerabilities without requiring team intervention.
1. **Fostering a genuine devops culture through cross-training** (18:59) — Immersing application developers and infrastructure engineers in each other's workflows builds vital system resilience.
1. **Open source resources and public sector tech roles** (22:05) — Open-source repositories, strategy blogs, and engineering positions within the government are publicly available resources.
1. **Expanding devops culture to non-technical executives** (23:54) — Advocates lead ongoing efforts to educate executives on infrastructure value and core operational principles.
1. **Cultivating empathy for legacy state technology systems** (25:16) — Maintaining critical inherited infrastructure is often more valuable than immediately discarding it.
1. **Navigating public sector restrictions and technology experimentation** (26:22) — Service standards and public cloud guidelines govern how government teams experiment with new technologies.
1. **Advice for women navigating the technology industry** (27:50) — Finding supportive allies and inclusive organizations actively encourages career growth and workplace diversity.
1. **Infrastructure resilience during political administration changes** (29:31) — Underlying technology platforms maintain functional stability regardless of shifting government priorities.
1. **Adapting justice services and remote work during a pandemic** (30:42) — Distributed teams rolled out remote user research and virtual prison visits to adapt to external constraints.
1. **Integrating security practices for devsecops adoption** (32:58) — Collaborating closely with cybersecurity teams ensures the successful implementation of automated code and image scanning.

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