With over 50 years of collective experience in government modernization across federal civilian agencies such as HUD, DHS, HHS, USDA, and the IRS, the founders of Nginering have been instrumental in spearheading intricate modernization and transformation initiatives. Their expertise has been pivotal in facilitating the transition of agencies from costly legacy mainframe systems, implementing state-of-the-art cyber analytics to safeguard vital resources, and enhancing operational capabilities through the adoption of cutting-edge technologies.
Challenge
Our client’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. To meet mission goals, our client insures residential mortgages so lenders can offer moderate-to-low-income Americans access to affordable home loans without high-risk fees. Our client insures residential mortgages worth over $1 trillion dollars.
Our client was straddled with decades-old and expensive legacy systems with challenging and expensive integrations and manual, paper-based processes. The outdated technology impacted the agency’s mission and ability to provide affordable housing to citizens.
Solution
Nginering’s principal technologist, supported this agency in 2019-20 timeframe and helped kickstart a scaled agile modernization initiative. Rajiv operationalized an AWS General Support System (GSS) with an ATO in less than 4 months, and implemented, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a digital document delivery capability in 9 days. He crafted and executed a scaled agile modernization roadmap that reengineered business processes, streamlined user experience and implemented a cloud and DevSecOps architecture to automate software delivery during the beginning phases of the modernization effort.
Today, as part of a new contract, Nginering’s cross-functional development team is continuing the modernization work using Salesforce and AWS. We apply the Strangler-Fig Pattern to incrementally replace monolithic mainframe systems into cloud-native, API-driven microservices using Java / SpringBoot, and AWS Machine Learning services. Our services include:
- Translate business requirements into product backlog of epics and user stories using JIRA
- Reengineer business processes, develop solutions architecture and document in Confluence
- Design and develop Microservices and APIs applying 12-factor-app practices
- Standardize usage of MISMO specifications for lender-facing APIs
- Implement Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
- Automate all unit and integration testing using Serenity, REST Assured and Selenium
- Implement GitOps and CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI, Gradle, and Terraform
- Continuously monitor code quality and test coverage using SonarQube
Our team rapidly develops and delivers new features and capabilities at high velocity in 2-week sprints.
Results
- Delivered our first improved Case Binder capability to production within 4 months
- Reduced manual processes by 5x by automating real-time integrations with legacy systems
- Improved lender user experience by providing instant feedback on validations and errors
- Realized a 50% reduction in total hours FHA staff dedicated to managing case binder assignments weekly
- Achieved consistent high code quality over successive releases with 80% test coverage
Challenge
Our client provides low-income households with the opportunity to own and/or repair modest homes in rural areas. The agency’s two decades old mainframe system managed the loan origination activities. The agency receives around 30,000 loans and grants applications each year. Limited changes have created several challenges as the business needs of the agency’s staff and customers have evolved over time. Unlike the commercial mortgage industry that went paperless, many of the agency’s processes are manual, paper-based, and out of compliance.
Solution
Using a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) approach, Nginering supports the design and development of a low code FedRAMP authorized cloud-based Loan Origination System (LOS) intended to replace legacy systems. The modernization effort encompasses various domains including project management, product management, implementation management, business analysis, quality assurance and testing, data strategy, data mapping and service integration, solution architecture, and security. Our services on this modernization effort include:
- Lead the design of overall solutions architecture with leading digital lending transformation practices from the banking industry, and develop detailed design specifications for each major capability and feature requirement.
- Detail the integration architecture denoting the interfaces to various internal and external systems.
- Design interfaces and develop user interaction and data flow diagrams to denote how Borrowers, Loan Packagers, and Intermediaries will interact with our modern solution.
- Support the technical management of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) based execution, including Program Increment (PI) planning, Sprint Planning, Reviews, and Retrospective sessions.
- Develop user stories and tasks in JIRA to track integration-related features and work with the development team in implementing the required functionality.
Results
- Improved transparency into operational performance and governance of the loan origination process.
- Reduced data entry for the public and USDA employees and improved data quality.
- Enhanced the customer experience and regulatory compliance set by OCC, FRB, and CFPB.
- Developed an integrated, digital Mortgage Loan Origination solution design leveraging the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud platform as a customer facing Point of Sale (POS), Encompass Web as an industry leading Mortgage Loan Origination System (LOS), and MuleSoft Anypoint as an integration and REST API platform to enable a fully digital application submission and processing experience for both customers and internal users.
- Designed and implemented a new enterprise capability to enable secure, user level authorization from cloud-based applications to internal APIs using an OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code Flow paired with a MuleSoft Anypoint API manager policy.
Challenge
The customer did not have a robust security posture in place to monitor cyber criminals on some of their public applications. Nefarious actors were using citizen’s stolen data for criminal activities. The agency needed to begin monitoring user behavior to identify criminals stealing data and/or using stolen data to defraud the government
Solution
Nginering senior cybersecurity expert worked on a team to implement a 24/7 monitoring team to act as a first line of defense when abnormal user behavior was identified and establish a base-line for normal user behavior. Using the user behavior data, the team developed sophisticated models (some machine learning) to help adjust security protocols and better protect the agency against fraud. The team developed an analytics roadmap and operationalized a cyber analytics capability in less than 6 months.
Results
The algorithms built identified fraudulent activity totally over $22M in 2019 alone across two public applications. Prior to the project, no industry methodology was available to follow to detect this type of fraud, so the team developed a security solution that included combined advanced analytics, deep forensics analytics, a 24/7 monitoring team, and an escalation process with other agencies including law enforcement for suspicious transactions.