The Dextrous Web (trading as dxw)

GovPress website hosting, maintenance and support

GovPress is dxw’s website hosting, maintenance, and support platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for public and third-sector organisations. UK-hosted and operated by ISO27001-certified experts (TechOps, WordPress, Wagtail), GovPress provides the assurance you need with robust site maintenance and CMS core and plugin security updates. Choose flexible support options backed by responsive SLAs.

Features

• UK-based WordPress & Wagtail hosting that scales with your traffic
• Provided by dxw, an ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus-certified organisation
• Secure, resilient infrastructure with application-level firewalls and security controls
• Daily back-ups and point-in-time recovery
• Continuous, proactive monitoring
• Robust CMS maintenance schedule, including core and plugin updates
• Customisable support plans, including 24/7 emergency support
• Expert, proactive support through our online helpdesk
• Responsive Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
• On-demand autoscaling and redundancy

Benefits

• Built to host public sector WordPress and Wagtail CMS websites
• Secure and reliable hosting
• Never miss a CMS core or plugin security update
• Flexible support options to meet your needs
• Easy access to help from our WordPress and Wagtail experts
• Responsive, auto-scaling containerised infrastructure, including CDN
• Painless deployment and rollback
• Proactive monitoring of security vulnerabilities for WordPress plugins

£850 a unit a month

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at sales@dxw.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

970715663546912

Contact

Alex Jackson
0345 257 7520
sales@dxw.com

Service scope

• Service constraints: GovPress is a platform built specifically for public and third sector WordPress and Wagtail sites. We provide secure hosting, maintenance, support and development services to cover all your WordPress and Wagtail needs in one place.; ; In order to provide security assurance, sites being migrated to the service must be audited by us before being deployed onto the platform. ; ; Emergency support issues can be addressed outside of core business hours. Our hours of business are 1000-1800 on weekdays, excluding public holidays.
• System requirements: A reasonably modern browser as per GOV.UK Service Manual

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: For urgent priority, the initial response is 1 support hour. For continued support, response times are 2 working hours (though dxw will usually continue working and updating urgent priority support tickets during support hours) For high priority, the initial response is 2 working hours. For continued support, response times are 8 working hours. For normal priority, the initial response is 8 working hours. For continued support, response times are 24 working hours (ie three working days). For low priority, the initial response is 24 working hours. For continued support, response times are 80 working hours (ie two working weeks).
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Phone support: No
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: Our experience has taught us clients’ support needs differ depending on their in-house technical capabilities and the profile of their sites. ; Our support plans can be tailored to reflect these needs with optional out-of-hours and 24/7 emergency infrastructure support add-ons.; Our support helpdesk is available from 10:00 to 18:00 for routine requests, 08:00 to 20:00 for out-of-hours clients, and 24/7 for sites requiring emergency support. ; By raising a ticket, you can ask for assistance with any problem, from a system bug to help using the WordPress administration interface.; With a minimum of 2 hours of retained support per month, support plans can be scaled up and down in hourly blocks in line with clients’ regular usage.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: Dxw will work with you to configure our GovPress service to meet your needs. We’ll make sure that all of the options are clearly presented and explained so that you can feel confident about your decisions.; ; To begin with, we’ll assess your likely capacity and support requirements. Based on this we’ll recommend a combination of infrastructure, maintenance and support options to best meet your needs. ; Questions about our service can be raised through the G-Cloud clarifications question process to help you make an informed decision. ; Hosting, maintenance and support can be tweaked to fit your changing needs throughout the life of the contract.; ; We can also offer help with more complex migrations that may require functional changes or assurance work to be completed, as well as supporting any internal assurance work that you might need to do within your organisation.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats: HTML
• End-of-contract data extraction: Should you choose to migrate away from GovPress, we offer a straightforward offboarding service to ensure you have everything that you need. ; dxw will supply a full export of site content (database and uploaded files such as images and documents used in the site content) on request at any time, via a request to our Helpdesk; ; dxw will provide support to you and/or any authorised new supplier to migrate the site to a new environment or successfully extract data from it. ; ; Should you and/or your authorised new supplier require further assistance, we can, for an additional fee, remain involved with the migration to a new hosting environment to help you and them become more familiar with the service and complete a thorough handover.
• End-of-contract process: GovPress provides a technical platform and approach that avoids lock-in. We have designed the off-boarding process to be as seamless and simple as possible. ; ; If you decide to move on we will keep in close contact with you throughout the off-boarding process, to ensure quality of service from beginning to end. ; ; We will arrange a meeting, in person or on the phone, to discuss the date you want to leave and the steps we will need to take in order to prepare your service for the move. This will include steps like data migration (see previous section), decommissioning and URL redirection, new supplier liaison and issuing final invoices.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Using the web interface: Our web interface can be used by all clients to view, manage and respond to support tickets across their organisation.
• Web interface accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Web interface accessibility testing: Testing completed by our support software provider Zendesk
• API: No
• Command line interface: Yes
• Command line interface compatibility:
  • Linux or Unix
  • MacOS
• Using the command line interface: Developers can manage plugin and theme dependencies within their service, start a local test server and deploy code to production.

Scaling

• Scaling available: Yes
• Scaling type:
  • Automatic
  • Manual
• Independence of resources: All sites are served via a world-class Content Distribution Network, ensuring our service can cope with significant increases in demand.; ; As part of our dedicated hosting tier, we have strict separation of customer instances, ensuring an increase in demand from other users of our GovPress service does not affect your site.
• Usage notifications: Yes
• Usage reporting:
  • Email
  • Other
• Other usage reporting: Via support ticket

Analytics

• Infrastructure or application metrics: Yes
• Metrics types:
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • HTTP request and response status
  • Memory
  • Network
  • Number of active instances
  • Other
• Other metrics: Available on request - please enquire for details
• Reporting types:
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Datacentre security standards: Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: Our underlying infrastructure is provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS adheres to numerous independently validated privacy, data protection, security protections and control processes, and is responsible for the physical security of the hardware powering its services. We rely on them for management of physical media.; ; Where appropriate, we also add layers of logical encryption to our services; for example, to protect backups at rest and information in transit.
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type:
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
  • Hardware containing data is completely destroyed
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Backup and recovery

• Backup and recovery: Yes
• What’s backed up:
  • CMS site content
  • CMS code and configuration
  • CMS file uploads
• Backup controls: The service is automatically backed up daily.; Should you require a custom backup service, please get in touch to discuss your needs.
• Datacentre setup:
  • Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
  • Multiple datacentres
• Scheduling backups: Supplier controls the whole backup schedule
• Backup recovery: Users contact the support team

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)
  • Other
• Other protection within supplier network: SSH2 (modern ciphers only)

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: We aim for the GovPress platform to be available 100% of the time,; unless a period of scheduled improvement work is underway. We acknowledge that, other than during these occasional periods, anything less than 100% availability is a lapse in the service level that you expect.; ; In reality, with any real-world system involving components and; connectivity, there is no such thing as perfect reliability. However, if the platform becomes unavailable as a result of a failure of a component that we control, we will refund the fees paid for any period of downtime longer than 1 hour.
• Approach to resilience: GovPress is designed to be highly resilient. All GovPress-hosted clients benefit from multiple layers of caching, daily backups with the ability to quickly rebuild individual machines, load-balancing for redundancy, which permits downtime-free continuous improvement, and extremely straightforward scaling options where additional capacity is required. Infrastructure auto-scaling can be implemented on request; ; For more details, please enquire.
• Outage reporting: GovPress is comprehensively monitored. For any outage incident, we alert clients via email and conduct a post-incident review.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Support and management interfaces require a username and password login over HTTPS.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
• Management access authentication:
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Username or password
• Devices users manage the service through: Any device but through a bastion host (a bastion host is a server that provides access to a private network from an external network such as the internet)

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: Between 1 month and 6 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: Between 1 month and 6 months
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: Approachable Certification
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 06/04/2023
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: Our certification covers all areas of the business and operations.
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
• Information security policies and processes: Our information security management system covers every aspect of dxw's operations, including GovPress. Day-to-day security decisions are managed by our Head of Technical Operations, who reports to the Managing Director. The effectiveness of the system is reviewed at least annually. We are also subject to an annual ISO27001 audit. ; ; We take a continuous improvement approach to all our internal processes as we learn lessons.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Configuration and change management approach: GovPress is fully configuration-managed, and all changes are tracked via source control. We monitor announcements of issues related to the system-level and application-level components that we use and treat all security-related updates as high-priority work.; ; We constantly monitor and improve the platform as we gain experience operating it, and we consider the security impact of our changes at all stages of our work.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: We keep our services under constant review. We monitor open-source intelligence and vulnerability disclosure lists in order to discover new vulnerabilities. We also proactively seek out vulnerabilities in components we use and disclose them responsibly. We treat security updates as high-priority work. The vast majority of routine updates, including security updates, are automatically applied to production machines. We regularly carry out penetration testing, both on behalf of our clients and of our own, and use the results to harden and improve our services, and to model new potential threats and attacks.
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: We monitor a wide variety of metrics across our infrastructure. We also monitor for anomalous log events and review these alerts centrally. Our actions based on these events vary. Our most frequent action is to refine and extend our set of rules for dropping malicious traffic and/or generating bans for the originating IP addresses. As necessary, we also carry out investigations into underlying issues, and take appropriate remedial action. We respond to these issues as they arise during business hours, at the start of business hours for non-emergency alerts, and 24/7 for critical alerts.
• Incident management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Incident management approach: Following the initial incident response by our operations team, we carry out a post-incident review. This review is published internally and shared with clients when there is a client impact. The review identifies the nature of the incident, documents the initial response, explains the timeline and circumstances of the incident and lists agreed remedial actions. These actions are then fed into ongoing operations work. Users are able to report incidents via the support desk, and are encouraged to use our emergency address and/or follow up by phone where appropriate.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Separation between users

• Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart: Yes
• Who implements virtualisation: Supplier
• Virtualisation technologies used: Other
• Other virtualisation technology used: AWS & Docker
• How shared infrastructure is kept separate: For our shared infrastructure tier, we use Docker to maintain separation of clients sharing the same infrastructure. For our dedicated tier, virtual machines are not shared between customers, and each virtual machine is operated within a VPC dedicated to a single client. Provision of virtual machines and their separation at the hardware level is managed by Amazon Web Services.

Energy efficiency

• Energy-efficient datacentres: Yes
• Description of energy efficient datacentres: Dxw data centre partners focus on energy efficiency and continuous innovation in their data centres, and their scale allows them to achieve higher resource utilization and energy efficiency than the typical on-premises data centre. In addition to the environmental benefits inherently associated with running applications in the cloud, they have a long-term commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy usage for their global infrastructure.

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  dxw strives to positively impact the public and third sectors through its work. One of our key initiatives is our commitment to environmental sustainability and the fight against climate change. We have achieved carbon neutrality recognition by disclosing our carbon footprint calculation, implementing a carbon reduction strategy, and implementing a carbon offsetting program that neutralises 150% of our estimated carbon footprint. We also set ambitious goals for ourselves, including a year-on-year reduction in emissions, collaborating with sustainable and ethical companies, challenging suppliers to reduce their carbon footprints, and working with clients to provide data on their emissions. Our carbon reduction plan is publicly accessible on our website. Working with dxw can help minimise the environmental impact of your digital service through low-tech options, carbon reduction strategies, and offsetting where possible. For example, we can help establish an environmental performance budget for your services, defining key goals and constraints such as page loading times, asset optimisation, and performance ratings. This can help optimise performance, reduce energy consumption, and enhance user experience, particularly in regions with limited electricity access or on battery-powered devices. By reducing energy consumption, dxw can contribute to both environmental sustainability and enhancement of user experience. A service with fewer assets and optimised content can help reduce overall energy consumption for users and at the hosting level. This offers cost savings and performance savings for users. Overall, dxw's commitment to environmental sustainability and the fight against climate change is commendable. Our approach to minimising the environmental impact of the services we work on through low-tech options, carbon reduction strategies, and offsetting, where possible, can help achieve tangible cost and performance advantages for clients while contributing to a better environment.

  Tackling economic inequality

  As an employee-owned company, we prioritise the collective well-being of our staff and strive to create an inclusive environment that represents the communities we live in and addresses the complex and interrelated issues affecting inequality in employment, skills, and pay in the digital and data profession, within the UK public sector and supply chain. Our commitment to promoting equity and diversity is evident in various initiatives, such as advertising job opportunities in platforms targeting underrepresented groups, implementing measures to reduce bias in our recruitment process, introducing standardised pay bands, and providing robust career progression frameworks. We actively engage in initiatives promoting diversity and equity, such as sponsoring Ada Lovelace Day and collaborating with the University of Leeds to inspire talent from underrepresented groups in STEM careers. Our public blog reflects our commitment, where we share insights on diversity and equity issues, including team members' perspectives and discussions on neurodiversity, trans awareness, and more. To gauge our company's standing and identify areas for improvement, we conduct an annual diversity survey, meticulously monitoring and anonymously reporting on nine dimensions of diversity. We also provide open and confidential channels for staff to raise and discuss diversity and HR-related matters. Our leadership team is dedicated to upholding our inclusion, diversity, and equal opportunities policies. We offer training on unconscious bias for new hires and equality in recruitment for hiring managers and allocate an annual learning and development allowance of £1000 and four days for professional development. We actively support team members with paid assistance for professional qualifications and offer flexible and remote working options. By championing inclusivity, fostering professional growth, and addressing systemic biases, we strive for a workplace where everyone can thrive and contribute meaningfully.

  Equal opportunity

  dxw believes that being a team of individuals with different backgrounds, views, and experience enables us to create better public services. We’re employee-owned, so it’s part of our deed of trust to pay staff fairly and support their wellbeing. Our leadership team is responsible for our inclusion, diversity and equal opportunities policy. To understand and identify where we stand as a company and how we can improve, we run an annual diversity survey, monitoring and anonymously reporting on nine dimensions of diversity. We also provide open and private channels, as appropriate, that enable staff to identify and discuss diversity and HR issues and topics. We provide unconscious bias training on joining and equality in recruitment training. We recently offered discipline-specific training for the UCD team on ‘Equity by Design’, which gave our teams practical ways to ensure that BAME communities are represented in our work. We advertise jobs in places that target less-represented groups, e.g. Coding Black Females, Ada’s List and disability-focused recruitment sites. We reduce bias in our recruitment process through anonymisation and situation/skills-based selection rather than CVs. We relocated our HQ to Leeds to create more opportunities outside of London. We introduced standardised pay bands mapped to SFIA levels to reduce pay inequality across and within teams. We use career progression frameworks to set out behaviours, skills, and capabilities needed to progress. We offer flexible working patterns and support remote working. We write about diversity and equity issues on our public blog to encourage representation, including individual team members’ perspectives on equity in March 2023, neurodiversity and autism in the workforce in February 2023, and trans-awareness week in November 2022. We also have a working group that regularly discusses, recommends, and supports actions to improve Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI).

  Wellbeing

  dxw is committed to promoting wellbeing in the workplace and has developed a comprehensive wellbeing program for its staff. The program includes a cash plan, a cycle-to-work scheme, and access to an employee assistance program. We also monitor staff wellbeing through regular check-ins, tracking annual leave utilisation and working hours, and monitoring staff engagement with physical wellbeing benefits. We conduct company-wide sentiment analysis through quarterly surveys to refine our HR policies and address identified issues effectively. This has included the introduction of personal leave allowances in addition to our regular annual leave. To support individual wellbeing, line managers are trained to support staff on individual wellbeing matters and have access to forums for knowledge sharing. Our board of directors actively address health and wellbeing concerns, and any wellbeing issues impacting projects are escalated to the appropriate director for discussion and resolution. We offer flexible work schedules to promote a healthy work-life balance, such as four-day workweeks and compressed hours. ; ; Overall, dxw prioritises employee wellbeing, demonstrating our commitment to socially responsible business practices.

Pricing

• Price: £850 a unit a month
• Discount for educational organisations: No
• Free trial available: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at sales@dxw.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.