Dept of Home Affairs: Architecture as a Service

The Background

The Department of Home Affairs (Home Affairs) is responsible for Australia’s customs, border, and immigration policy. In partnership with the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), Home Affairs is delivering the National Criminal Intelligence System (NCIS) to consolidate and strengthen intelligence capabilities across agencies.

To ensure the program had the right architectural leadership and capacity, Home Affairs engaged CTO Consulting to deliver Architecture as a Service (AaaS), providing flexible expertise, scalable resources, and on-demand support for critical program milestones.

CTO Consulting was engaged to provide demand-driven Architecture as a Service to the NCIS program. The model offered:

• Leadership and Governance – Program/Enterprise Architect to run the Design Authority and align architecture across agencies.

• Enterprise Direction – Roadmaps, principles, and guidelines to steer consistent decision-making.

• Solution and Security Architecture – Technical reviews, solution blueprints, and security assessments aligned to release deadlines.

• Cross-Agency Collaboration – Engagement in government architecture forums to ensure interoperability.

• Business Alignment – Technology decisions tied directly to business outcomes and value streams.

A core team of SMEs that scaled up when specialist skillsets were required, and scaled back in line with budget constraints or reduction in requirements from the business.

The Delivery

CTO Consulting provided extensive architectural support, ensuring both immediate problem-solving and long-term sustainability. Highlights include:

• Resilience and Continuity – Reviewed disaster recovery and business continuity; produced failure mode analysis and recommendations.

• Security and Access Control – Analysed Tranche 1 access requirements, scoped solutions, and delivered remediation plans for penetration testing.

• Technology Reviews – Refactored data pipelines, assessed Azure blob storage, reviewed graph database usage, and scoped alternatives.

• Performance Gains – Delivered a white paper and POC pivoting from Hadoop to Elastic, dramatically improving search performance.

• Governance – Authored and reviewed decision papers for NCIS boards, ensuring alignment with business and partner requirements.

• Cloud Enablement – Designed approaches for secure cloud adoption and completed POC for WSO2 authentication.

• Code Quality – Conducted in-depth code review with recommendations on stability, performance, and sustainability.

• Roadmap Delivery – Updated the NCIS architectural roadmap; designed options for identity, API management, and access control.

The Outcome

CTO Consulting’s Architecture as a Service delivered measurable impact across the NCIS program:

• Enterprise-Grade Skills and Leadership

  • Delivered a high-quality architectural capability that Home Affairs could not resource internally.

• Flexibility and Specialist Expertise

  • Scaled capacity to address specific technical and program challenges.

• System Stability and Performance

  • Improved scalability and resilience for a national rollout handling tens of thousands of users and hundreds of GB of sensitive data.

• Governance and Alignment

  • Ensured decisions aligned with business outcomes, program release timeframes, and cross-agency requirements.

• Future-Ready Platform

  • Positioned NCIS to support the sustainable delivery of national intelligence capabilities.

Summary

When the NCIS program required additional architectural leadership and capacity, CTO Consulting provided a flexible, demand-driven service model that stabilised delivery during critical program phases.

By combining enterprise-level strategy with practical solution design, CTO Consulting ensured NCIS had the right foundations for long-term success.

Contact CTO Consulting to learn more about digital transformation or our other services.