Made Tech partnered with the Met Office to embed a more data-driven approach to product development. Working together as a single Data & Insights team, the engagement focused on helping the organisation turn data into actionable insights, build confidence in evidence-based decision-making and create a culture where every product change could be linked to measurable value.

The challenge

The Met Office was not short of data. User feedback, customer reviews, behavioural analytics and product performance metrics were all available across the organisation. The challenge was ensuring that this information could be consistently used to support product decisions.

Like many organisations undergoing digital transformation, the opportunity was as much cultural as technical. Product teams, stakeholders and specialists all needed a shared understanding of how data could inform decision-making. Without that alignment, valuable insights risked remaining isolated within individual teams rather than shaping the wider direction of products and services.

At the same time, the Met Office wanted to deepen its understanding of users. Beyond simply measuring engagement, the organisation was committed to helping people better understand weather and climate information, enabling them to make more informed decisions in their everyday lives. To achieve this, product teams needed clearer evidence about what users valued, how they behaved and where improvements would have the greatest impact.

Key learnings

A data-driven transformation is not primarily a technology challenge. It is a cultural one. Success depends on creating shared understanding, encouraging collaboration and ensuring evidence is accessible and meaningful to everyone involved in product delivery.

The Met Office’s commitment to understanding and empowering its users provided a strong foundation for building a more evidence-led approach to product development.

The approach

Made Tech’s approach centred on a simple principle: every product decision should be linked to measurable value.

Achieving this required more than implementing tools and dashboards. The joint Data & Insights team worked closely with stakeholders across the organisation to build engagement with data and develop confidence in evidence-based decision-making. Information was made accessible through a range of formats, from detailed datasets for technical users to dashboards, presentations and reports that provided context and explanation for wider stakeholder groups. This helped create a shared understanding of what the data was revealing and why it mattered.

To provide a complete picture of user needs and behaviours, the team brought together multiple sources of information. Customer surveys, user reviews, behavioural analytics and engagement data were combined to generate richer insights than any individual source could provide. By connecting qualitative and quantitative evidence, teams gained a deeper understanding of both what users were doing and the motivations behind those actions.

A key element of the engagement was the introduction of Success Measures, a framework designed to ensure that value was clearly defined before delivery began. For every proposed user-facing change, product owners were asked to articulate the outcome they expected to achieve. The Data & Insights team then worked with stakeholders to translate those goals into measurable metrics and identify the data required to assess success.

By introducing Success Measures at the earliest stages of product development, teams could identify dependencies sooner, align around common objectives and ensure the necessary analytics and feedback mechanisms were in place before implementation. This transformed measurement from a retrospective exercise into an integral part of the product development lifecycle.

Alongside this work, the team helped establish a consistent framework for measuring product performance. Core metrics, including customer satisfaction and users’ perception of forecast accuracy, were aligned to recognised industry standards, creating a shared language for evaluating success across products and teams.

Key learnings

Defining value before delivery creates stronger products and more effective decision-making.

By establishing measurable success criteria at the outset, organisations can move beyond assumptions, align teams around shared outcomes and create a repeatable framework for evidence-based product development.

The results

The engagement has helped establish a stronger culture of evidence-based decision-making across the Met Office’s digital product teams.

Working as a single Data & Insights team, Made Tech and Met Office colleagues combined user feedback, behavioural analytics and product performance data to provide stakeholders with a clear understanding of how users were responding to changes within the Met Office app. This enabled teams to make informed decisions, prioritise improvements and respond quickly when emerging issues were identified.

The introduction of Success Measures has also strengthened collaboration across teams. Product owners, analysts, designers and technical specialists are now aligned around clearly defined outcomes from the earliest stages of development. This has improved visibility of dependencies, encouraged earlier engagement between teams and ensured that measurement is considered throughout the delivery process rather than after changes have been released.

The ability to combine large-scale quantitative data with qualitative user feedback has created greater confidence in decision-making. Rather than relying on isolated feedback or anecdotal opinion, stakeholders can draw on a broad evidence base to understand user needs and justify product decisions.

The team’s insight work also directly influenced product priorities during the phased rollout of the refreshed Android app. Feedback analysis revealed that requests to reinstate widgets consistently ranked as the most prominent user concern, accounting for around 13-14% of feedback during the early stages of rollout. Even after eight weeks, widget-related feedback remained one of the most common themes among approximately 8,000 respondents.

Armed with clear evidence of user demand, the app team re-prioritised development work and accelerated delivery of widgets ahead of the full launch.

The Data & Insights team also monitored app usage trends to understand the broader impact of the refresh. While weather conditions naturally influence usage levels, analysis showed that total app users during the three months following launch exceeded the equivalent period in the previous year and were higher than any comparable period in the preceding five years. This provided further evidence that the refreshed experience was being positively received by users.

Key learnings

The most valuable outcome of a data-driven transformation is not the data itself but the ability to turn evidence into action.

By combining user feedback, behavioural analytics and clearly defined success measures, the Met Office can make confident, transparent decisions that are linked to measurable outcomes and demonstrable user value.

Insight in Action

Summary

Made Tech helped the Met Office build a culture where product decisions are guided by evidence and linked to measurable outcomes. Through a combination of stakeholder engagement, user insight, cross-team collaboration and the introduction of success measures, the joint Data & Insights team has strengthened the organisation’s ability to understand users, evaluate opportunities and continuously improve its digital services. The result is a more transparent, evidence-led approach to product development that delivers measurable value for both the organisation and the millions of people who rely on Met Office services.

The post Building a culture of evidence-led product development at the Met Office appeared first on Made Tech.

To fulfil its mission to help people stay safe and thrive, the Met Office needed to modernise its digital estate. The goal was clear: ensure world-class weather science could be clearly understood, quickly accessed and confidently acted upon in moments that matter.

The challenge

Trusted science, outdated digital experience

Despite its reputation for accuracy, research revealed a gap between the quality of the Met Office’s science and the usability of its digital service.

Citizens described the legacy app as cluttered and difficult to navigate. While rich in information, it was hard to interpret quickly, increasing cognitive load and reducing confidence. For a service responsible for official weather warnings, this created real risk.

The underlying technology added further constraints. Built in 2016 across separate iOS and Android codebases, the platform increased cost, slowed delivery and limited the ability to respond to changing needs.

At the same time, people were increasingly accessing weather information through third-party platforms. Without a modern, intuitive service, the Met Office risked losing reach and relevance.

Key learning

Clarity and usability are essential to delivering public value, even for highly trusted organisations.

The approach

Redesigning experience and enabling continuous improvement

Made Tech partnered with the Met Office to redesign and rebuild its weather app, focusing on both user experience and delivery capability.

The team simplified information architecture and redesigned key journeys so users could quickly understand conditions and act with confidence. Development was shaped through beta phases involving over 18,000 users, ensuring real feedback informed each iteration.

The legacy platform was replaced with a single React Native codebase, enabling faster releases, reduced duplication and a more resilient service.

A key shift was introducing stronger data, tracking and reporting. This supported an insight-to-action model for product decisions and enabled clearer communication of progress and impact to stakeholders and senior leaders.

Key learning

Embedding data and clear reporting improves both product outcomes and organisational decision-making.

The results

Better decisions for users, greater efficiency for the organisation

The refreshed app delivers measurable improvements in usability, engagement and operational efficiency.

Users can now complete key tasks more quickly and with greater confidence, with testing showing clear improvements in perceived simplicity, calmness and professionalism.

During Storm Chandra, daily active users increased by 29%, demonstrating the app’s role as a trusted source when it matters most. The app remains the top-ranked weather app in the UK, with ratings stabilising after launch.

Operationally, the new platform has delivered significant efficiencies:

• 33% reduction in developers required
• Shift from three weekly to weekly releases
• Simplified support through a single codebase

The introduction of data-led reporting has also strengthened how performance is tracked and communicated, helping teams demonstrate impact and support better decision-making at all levels.

The platform now provides a strong foundation for future improvements, including accessibility, personalisation and richer communication of weather and climate risk.

Key learning

Modern technology combined with insight-led delivery creates services that are easier to use, easier to evolve and more effective at delivering public value.

Summary

By modernising both the technology platform and the way it is delivered, the Met Office has strengthened its ability to serve citizens at scale. The refreshed app improves clarity in everyday decisions and resilience in critical moments, while reducing operational complexity and cost. It provides a sustainable foundation for continuous improvement and ensures the Met Office can continue helping the UK stay safe and thrive in an increasingly digital world.

For more information on the digital transformation services we offer, visit our digital transformation website or take a look at our national security and public safety pages.

The post Helping the UK stay safe and thrive through a revised Met Office App appeared first on Made Tech.

The Correspondence Drafter was one of the department’s first uses of generative AI. An internal proof-of-concept demonstrated that generative AI could significantly reduce the time required to draft responses. The next challenge was to turn that early prototype into a secure, production-ready service that aligned with departmental controls and could be trusted by civil servants in their day-to-day work.

Challenge

Drafting responses to correspondence was a manual and time-intensive process. Team members needed to locate the correct briefing packs, interpret guidance and produce responses from scratch before reviewing and sending them. While this ensured accuracy, it limited the team’s capacity and made it difficult to respond quickly as volumes grew.

The Department for Education wanted to understand whether AI could assist with drafting without undermining governance, data protection or the role of human judgement. Any solution needed to be secure, auditable and easy to evolve over time, while remaining firmly under the control of the correspondence team.

Approach

Made Tech joined a blended, multidisciplinary team working across the department to support this work. Our role was to provide technical architecture expertise, helping shape a solution that could move safely from prototype to private beta within the department’s Microsoft Azure environment.

Working closely with DfE developers, infrastructure specialists, user researchers and Microsoft stakeholders, we helped design a production-ready architecture that met departmental standards and security requirements. This included supporting internal assurance processes, advising on best practice for cloud-native AI services, and ensuring the design could withstand scrutiny from senior stakeholders and security teams.

As one of the department’s early AI initiatives, the solution was designed with a strong emphasis on responsible use. AI supports the drafting of initial responses, but civil servants remain fully accountable for reviewing, editing and approving all correspondence before it is sent.

We also helped ensure the platform could be extended sustainably. New briefing packs can be added through a simple, structured process using Azure-managed services, allowing the correspondence team to expand the tool to cover additional subjects over time without significant redevelopment or ongoing support.

Result

With the Correspondence Drafter in place, the drafting process has been significantly streamlined. Upon receiving correspondence, the drafter selects the relevant AI assistant and enters the enquiry into the tool. A first draft response is generated using approved briefing content, which is then quality-assured by the correspondence team before being sent.

In testing, this approach has significantly reduced the time taken to produce a first draft for supported correspondence types. The tool is currently in private beta on Microsoft Azure and has received positive user feedback.

Impact

By supporting the Department for Education to introduce one of its first production AI services, Made Tech helped demonstrate how AI can be adopted pragmatically within government. The Correspondence Drafter shows how carefully designed AI tools can improve productivity while preserving trust, assurance and accountability, enabling civil servants to focus more of their time on higher-value work.

The post AI-powered efficiency at the Department for Education appeared first on Made Tech.

Challenge: Speed, scale, and safeguarding

At the outset of the crisis, the immediate need was for a working digital service that could be used by members of the public and local authorities. The public required a safe and simple way to offer to host individuals and families, while local authorities needed tools to manage applications, safeguarding checks and ongoing casework. 

The service had to operate at national scale across all local authorities in England, securely handle highly sensitive personal and safeguarding data relating to vulnerable people, and support delivery across central government and local authorities. All of this had to be achieved amid heightened international tensions, intense media scrutiny, and extreme time pressure. 

The initial emergency response relied on an existing proprietary legacy platform, which came with escalating support costs of £ millions per year and limited departmental control over system data and code.

In the longer term, MHCLG wanted to reduce dependence on this legacy system and implement a more flexible technology solution that would enable them to control system data and code and ensure the service met high standards of security, resilience, governance, and usability. 

Failure to deliver quickly and safely would have directly affected people seeking refuge and the local authorities’ ability to respond effectively. 

Our approach: Deliver now, build for the future

Working as a blended team, MHCLG led on strategy, policy, and safeguarding, while Made Tech served as the lead delivery partner, responsible for shaping, building, and operating the service across two phases. 

Successful delivery depended on both organisations working seamlessly as a single multidisciplinary team. 

Phase 1: Emergency response 

We mobilised our teams immediately, redeploying specialists from other programmes to meet this urgent national need. An initial working service was delivered within days, with a full live service operational within weeks. 

This phase focused on enabling national operations at pace, including secure application journeys and integration with an existing data platform to support case management and safeguarding checks. The service supported national rollout across England’s local authorities and enabled thousands of applications during peak demand. 

The project delivery took place under extreme time constraints while maintaining appropriate safeguards for highly sensitive personal data. 

Phase 2: A sustainable replacement platform 

Once the initial service was live, the joint MHCLG and Made Tech team began designing and delivering a full end-to-end replacement for the proprietary legacy platform. Working against a tight deadline, we delivered the new platform in approximately 10 months. 

A core technical architectural decision was to adopt Databricks as a unified orchestration and governance engine. This enabled the team to replicate existing data workflows and pipelines with significantly higher reliability, while improving transparency, resilience and operational control. 

Databricks’ built-in governance capabilities, including Unity Catalog, were used to implement consistent data access controls and auditability. This ensured strict safeguarding requirements were met while enabling appropriate data access for analytical and operational use across central government and local authorities. 

The wider technology stack was deliberately built using modern, well-supported open standards, languages and frameworks. This ensured interoperability across government systems, minimised vendor lock-in and reduced long-term cost exposure to a proprietary system. The resulting service is fully owned, operated and extendable by MHCLG to other programmes as may be required. 

Putting users and security first 

We focused on simplifying user journeys for local authority staff, reducing administrative effort and lowering the training burden for new users. 

Local authority feedback highlighted improved usability: 

“It’s simplicity – very user friendly system.” 

“Ease of use for officers recording checks. It is very straightforward.” 

“Good training on the lead up to the change-over. Good follow up once the change over took place.” 

We treated security and safeguarding as first-class requirements throughout delivery. The service meets MHCLG’s stringent internal controls, including GDS standards and WCAG accessibility requirements, alongside external independent testing such as penetration testing.

Results and impact

Our work delivered measurable strategic and operational value for MHCLG. By replacing the proprietary legacy platform, the department avoided around £15 million in costs, reduced ongoing support and operational spend, and regained full control of its data, architecture and delivery roadmap. This transition was completed while meeting fixed contractual deadlines and maintaining live service continuity.

Local authorities benefit from a simpler, more intuitive service that improved efficiency and reduced onboarding and training time. Documented APIs and open standards improve interoperability, while the delivery approach created a reusable service model that can be applied to future resettlement and emergency schemes.

For service users, the new platform enables faster, clearer application processing and reduced administrative delays, with stronger support for sensitive and safeguarding-led cases.

Across the wider public sector, this project demonstrates that moving away from deeply embedded legacy technology is achievable at pace. It strengthened in-house capability through knowledge transfer and established reusable data integrations and delivery patterns for future policy services.

What’s next

Enabling faster, more cost-efficient and sustainable solutions 

The Homes for Ukraine digital service provides a strong, reusable foundation for future housing, resettlement and emergency accommodation programmes. 

Its architecture, governance model and open standards enable government to respond more quickly, securely and cost-effectively to future crises without rebuilding services from scratch. 

Active consideration is underway regarding reuse of the service for future housing or emergency accommodation schemes within MHCLG and local authorities.

The post Homes for Ukraine Digital Service: Enabling a national humanitarian response  appeared first on Made Tech.

By making eligibility checks faster, more reliable and simpler to complete, the service makes it easier for families and schools to understand eligibility and complete checks smoothly, and supports key pillars of the government Opportunity Mission the department is leading on, including “Best Start in Life” and “Every Child Achieving and Thriving”.

With the expansion of free school meal eligibility criteria, the Department for Education (DfE) identified the need to replace its legacy system, which was increasingly unreliable, difficult to extend, and unable to support changes in government policy. Working as part of a multidisciplinary team, Made Tech supported the department in designing and delivering a modern, scalable eligibility service that is capable of handling millions of checks a month and adapting to future needs.

Challenge

The existing eligibility checking system had become a significant constraint. It was slow, experienced downtime and wouldn’t have been cost-effective to update in line with the latest policy changes. This was particularly pressing as eligibility for free school meals was expanded, increasing demand on the service and the need for a system that could operate reliably at a national scale.

Schools and Local Authorities (LAs) relied on the service to identify eligible children, but outages and manual workarounds created an additional administrative burden and, in some cases, delayed access to entitlements. The department needed a replacement that could improve resilience, support a wider range of users and provide a foundation for future eligibility checks beyond free school meals.

Approach

Made Tech joined a blended delivery team made up of DfE civil servants and specialists from other consultancies. Our contribution focused on technical architecture, helping the department design a replacement eligibility-checking engine that could be delivered securely while the legacy service remained in operation, without adding complexity for users.

We supported the design of a modular, hub‑and‑spoke architecture, with a central processing engine capable of calling multiple external services to check eligibility. This approach allowed the service to integrate securely with other government departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions and HMRC, while remaining flexible enough to accommodate future policy or service changes.

The new service was designed to support a wide range of users, including parents accessing a public portal, schools and local authorities using their own systems, and third‑party suppliers integrating through APIs. Managing these different user groups and permission models was a key consideration throughout the design.

Our technical leadership helped guide the service through discovery, alpha and beta, ensuring that architectural decisions supported resilience, performance and long‑term sustainability. We also supported the move away from legacy dependencies towards more robust, strategically aligned government platforms, reducing the risk of downtime and improving responsiveness to change.

Result

The new eligibility service is now rolling out as a modern replacement for the legacy system. It supports parent and school portals, making it easier for families to check eligibility directly through the user‑friendly platform.

By reducing friction and failure in the eligibility‑checking process, the service removes practical barriers that previously made the process harder to navigate.

The service is already operating at a significant scale, processing more than two million eligibility checks each month as the rollout continues. Its modular design makes it easier to add new eligibility types, creating a foundation for future services that can help families access support earlier and more efficiently.

Impact

By modernising the Free School Meals eligibility service, the Department for Education has strengthened the reliability and resilience of a critical national service. Schools and local authorities now benefit from a more dependable system that reduces administrative burden, minimises downtime and supports faster decision‑making. This helps ensure the process is clearer, more reliable and easier for families and schools to use.

In practical terms, this means children from underprivileged backgrounds can now more easily access nutritious meals at school – a simple yet powerful foundation for better health, concentration, and learning outcomes.

The service also enables families to engage more directly with eligibility checks through parent‑facing channels, making the process clearer and easier to complete. As rollout continues, it will continue to become easier for families to check whether they are entitled to free school meals and linked benefits such as Pupil Premium funding, used to provide additional support to disadvantaged pupils.

This stronger link between eligibility, access and ease of use directly supports DfE’s Opportunity Mission priorities, helping ensure children are supported early and consistently so they can achieve and thrive.

From a departmental perspective, the new eligibility‑checking engine provides a flexible, future‑proof platform. Its modular architecture means it can respond more quickly to policy change, integrate with additional data sources and support new eligibility criteria over time. This positions the department to extend the service beyond free school meals, using the same core technology to help families access other forms of support more efficiently.

Made Tech is proud to have supported this work as part of a multidisciplinary team, contributing technical architecture expertise that helped the department move away from legacy constraints and towards a service designed for long‑term public value. The Free School Meals eligibility service demonstrates how modern digital platforms can underpin better outcomes for children and families, while giving public sector organisations the confidence to operate at national scale.

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Awaab’s Law introduced strict new requirements for how social landlords respond to hazards like damp and mould. Among these is the obligation to provide tenants with a written summary of investigation findings within three days.

This creates entirely new work. Providers were already investigating hazards and carrying out repairs, but producing a written, tenant-friendly summary within a fixed timeframe and delivering it reliably is new work. And it’s work worth doing – tenants deserve clear communication about what was found and what happens next. The challenge isn’t the requirement itself; it’s finding a way to deliver it consistently at scale.

Different providers have approached this in different ways, each with limitations:

Paper summaries left on-site: Some surveyors write a summary by hand and leave it with the tenant during the property visit. While quick, this approach lacks an audit trail – there’s no proof the summary was delivered. Handwritten notes can be lost or illegible, and tenants who don’t read English or have accessibility needs may not be able to understand them.

Back-office team writes it up: Others have surveyors send their notes to a back office team, who then draft a tenant-friendly summary and deliver it by email or post. For a provider handling ~100 damp and mould cases a month, that’s typically around 10 minutes per summary – or ~17 hours of back-office time every month spent drafting and sending summaries by hand (before any chasing, formatting, or rework)

Approach

When Made Tech built Hazard Case Management for Awaab’s Law, AI-powered summary generation was included from the start – not bolted on as an afterthought. The approach: use AI to draft tenant-friendly summaries automatically, with human oversight before delivery.

AI-generated draft

When an investigation is completed, the system uses a large language model to read the survey data and generate a clear, tenant-friendly summary. This isn’t data being pasted into ChatGPT – the LLM runs on Made Tech’s own UK-based infrastructure, and tenant data is never used to train models. This eliminates the manual drafting step while ensuring consistent quality.

Human review and editing

Once the AI draft is generated, the case is automatically flagged as ‘summary ready for review’, making it easy to see which cases need attention. Staff review and can edit the content if needed, maintaining quality control while avoiding the time-consuming blank-page problem.

Audit trail included

Every action in the platform is audited: when the surveyor’s report is added, when the summary is generated, when it’s reviewed and published, and when tenant notifications are sent. This gives them a complete timeline and clear evidence of compliance if challenged.

Digital delivery with accessibility built in

Whether the tenant is notified via letter, email or SMS, they’re given a unique URL to view their investigation summary online. Because the page uses the GOV.UK Design System, it works well with browser translation tools, so tenants can read their summary in their browser’s default language.

As a modern local authority, we’re committed to driving innovation that strengthens our communities and delivers long‑term value. This initiative represents exactly the kind of forward‑thinking partnership that helps us create resilient places, unlock new opportunities, and ensure that every resident benefits from a more connected, sustainable future” – Leona Menville, Strategic Director Housing, Environment & Communities

Results

A week of admin time saved every month

727 summaries generated in the first three months – an estimated 121 hours of manual work avoided. That’s equivalent to nearly a full week of admin capacity recovered every month.

Consistent, compliant documentation

Every summary follows the same structure and tone, reducing the risk of inconsistent communication or missing information.

Better communication for every tenant

Summaries are delivered digitally and are readable on any device. GOV.UK Design System compatibility means tenants can instantly translate the page into their preferred language – no letter to wait for.

Awaab’s Law created new compliance obligations that many providers are still figuring out how to meet at scale. By combining AI-powered drafting with digital delivery, LBBD has turned a potential admin burden into a streamlined process – saving time, improving accessibility, and building a clear audit trail.

Learn more about Hazard Case Management

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The challenge: finding a more efficient way to deliver digital services

The Home Office needed to scale its teams and improve processes while keeping services running. There were gaps in technical assurance, meaning some digital services lacked consistency. At the same time, the department wanted to reduce costs by avoiding unnecessary new technology purchases, making the most of existing tools and building shared platforms. Some projects also took too long to get started due to long discovery and planning phases.

Made Tech has worked on several projects over the past 4 years to tackle these challenges.

Key Home Office Enablers projects and their impact

1. Strengthening technical assurance

The Home Office Enablers Portfolio uses many different Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software products, but there was no standard way to document these, making it hard to track what was in use. Some projects lacked technical oversight, and decisions weren’t always based on a full understanding of risks.

Our approach

To fix this, we introduced a high-level design template to clearly and consistently document technical decisions. We also set up and chaired a Technical Review Forum, where teams could present their technical designs and have them peer-reviewed as a precursor to more formal governance such as the Technical Design Authority.

Results

• Faster decision-making with key documents stored in one place.
• Integrating security assurance from the start meant reducing costly fixes later.
• Clearer, more consistent ways of working and earlier peer review means improved efficiency.

2. Improving internal decision-making with the Enablers Portfolio Decision Tree

Requests to the Enablers Portfolio were often taken through a discovery phase to make sure the team fully understood the problem and could deliver a solution that met user needs. While this is good practice, it often led to buying new commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) tools for each individual problem – even when similar problems had already been solved elsewhere in the department.

This resulted in a growing number of one-off tools, each needing time-consuming assurance and acceptance, with high costs and maintenance overheads.

Our approach

To address this, we worked with the Head of Portfolio to introduce an entry-gate Decision Tree. This helped teams quickly assess whether a solution already existed that could be reused. It asked questions such as: Is this problem similar to others we’ve solved? Is there an existing platform that could meet this need? Can we break the problem down and reuse tools for part of the solution? 

If reuse looked possible, teams were encouraged to move quickly to alpha or private beta phases, prototyping on existing platforms to check suitability. Discovery work was still important, but was focused on truly new or poorly understood problems – or where a new product purchase was likely. In those cases, discovery helped ensure any new tools supported wider reuse and aligned with long-term strategy.

Results

• Faster project kick-offs through clearer, more proportionate decision-making.
• Reduced time and cost, resulting in faster solutions for customers.
• Increased reuse of existing platforms, leading to a more streamlined technology estate.
• Fewer bespoke point solutions, improving maintainability and reducing assurance overhead.
• More targeted use of discovery to support genuinely new or complex problems.

3. Modernising the Home Office intranet

The Home Office’s old intranet was outdated and inefficient, with poor search functionality and fragmented content. This made it difficult for the 45,000 staff members relying on the system to find essential information quickly and led to the emergence of ‘shadow’ intranets in other parts of the organisation. Additionally, the previous intranet was not mobile-friendly, failing to respond or render properly on mobile devices. As a result, staff couldn’t access it on their handsets, limiting flexibility and productivity.

Our approach

Made Tech provided key specialists – including content designers, business analysts, SharePoint experts and metadata consultants – to support a multidisciplinary team in designing and delivering a robust intranet solution. Our people worked alongside client teams and other suppliers to contribute expertise and shape the final outcome. We conducted in-depth user research to identify staff pain points, chose Microsoft SharePoint for its cost-effectiveness and integration and built and tested prototypes with users. The project included a full content overhaul, replacing 10,000 outdated pages with a streamlined set of 1,000 for improved clarity and usability.

Results

• User satisfaction improved considerably – approval ratings rose from 26% to 70%. 
• Staff can now find information 3 times faster, reducing time spent searching for critical policies and guidance. 
• The new platform is now mobile-friendly, allowing staff to access it on their handsets, improving accessibility and flexibility.
• The move to SharePoint significantly cut operational costs, replacing an £800K per year managed service with a more efficient solution. 
• Ongoing improvements include new features such as feedback functionality and an acronym finder as well as long-term plans to integrate additional HR and finance content.

4. Improving the Home Office forms platform

Forms are essential for the Home Office, used for everything from visitor bookings to internal admin. The existing Form Processing Management Platform (FPMP) had major limitations . The team was often slow to deliver forms, partly due to tension between simply building a form and taking the time to redesign the underlying business process..

Our approach

We helped diagnose the problems and make targeted improvements. We streamlined form development and introduced clearer guidelines on what was a simple form request – where simply building a form would have benefits, versus more complex – requiring a discovery and potentially business process changes and full service design. 

The team lacked the technical knowledge, and confidence to build forms beyond the most simple cases, meaning that implementation was delegated to the supplier, causing delays and increased costs. This lack of technical confidence also meant the team were unwilling to prototype forms on the platform, preferring tools like Figma – this led to a waterfall delivery where design and user research happened up front. 

We coached their team, showing them that they could build more complex forms quickly, building confidence and unlocking an iterative approach to delivery.

Results

• Forms are now delivered more quickly and efficiently.
• Teams have the confidence and skills to build and adapt forms themselves.
• A more flexible, collaborative approach has replaced the old waterfall model.

5. Consolidating Home Office CRM systems with Microsoft Dynamics

The Home Office didn’t have a strategic CRM platform. They’d been buying different point solutions for different CRM needs, leading to high costs and inefficiencies. By the time a new solution was selected, set up, assured and approved, costs had often spiraled.

Our approach

To fix this, we helped the Home Office adopt Microsoft Dynamics as a standard CRM platform. We wrote a technical strategy that recommended staying as close to out of the box Dynamics as possible, minimising any customisations.  Outlining a model of very thin customer solutions sitting on top of a common set of configurations. This approach allows a single product team to rapidly build and maintain flexible, scalable CRM solutions on a platform which is already assured for use.

Results

• Faster onboarding – new CRM customers can be set up in weeks instead of months.
• Lower costs – avoided high setup, assurance and maintenance costs for individual solutions.
• A unified CRM strategy reducing duplication and inefficiencies.
• Easier platform maintenance with automatic Microsoft updates

The impact of our work over 4 years

Across multiple projects, we’ve helped the department work more efficiently, speed up decision-making and ensure civil servants have the right tools to do their jobs.

For more information on the digital transformation services we offer, visit our digital transformation website or take a look at our national security and public safety pages.

The post Driving efficiency at the Home Office with better digital services appeared first on Made Tech.

In July 2022, Government Digital Service announced the closure of GOV.UK Platform as a Service (PaaS). For the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), this presented a significant challenge: migrating 41 critical digital services to a new platform without disruption. These services all play a key role in supporting trade, regulation and international business – so downtime just wasn’t an option.

The challenge wasn’t just technical. It was operational and cultural. Service teams had existing delivery priorities and limited time to get involved in platform development and migration. On top of that, the new platform was being developed in parallel with the earliest migrations. This meant that early adopters were using a product that was still work-in-progress.

The migration needed to be secure, incident-free and efficient,  all while maintaining business as usual.

Made Tech worked in close partnership with DBT’s digital teams to design and deliver a secure, flexible platform and migrated services to the new platform seamlessly.

Our approach: Planning and delivering the migration

From the beginning, we knew that making the migration process smooth and reliable was key to gaining service teams’ trust in the new platform. To do this, we:

• worked with DBT to create a clear migration plan that helped teams understand the risks, prepare their services and move over safely.
• placed migration engineers directly in service teams to offer practical support and build in-house skills. Over 90% of the team were from Made Tech.
• built automated tools to speed up migrations, cut down on manual tasks, and make the process more consistent.
• set up real-time support during cutovers, including bridge calls and incident planning, to make sure everything ran smoothly with minimal disruption.

Lawrence Goldstien, Lead Engineer at Made Tech explained this in more detail.

“We began by migrating internal tools to reduce risk and safeguard public-facing services. Every migration was an opportunity to refine our approach for subsequent services. By iterating and learning throughout, we scaled up to more complex services successfully and we have not had to roll any service back to GOV.UK PaaS.”

Co-designing the platform with service teams

While we were migrating services, we also worked closely with DBT to build a new cloud platform. We didn’t just replace GOV.UK PaaS, we created a platform that makes it easier for teams to deliver quickly and safely.

By embedding our engineers into DBT’s delivery teams, we got a clear understanding of their day-to-day needs and pain points. Using their feedback we shaped the platform’s features, making sure it was secure and flexible enough to grow over time. 

We focused on:

We also automated the setup using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), which kept environments consistent and reduced errors. Every part of the platform was designed with developers in mind. To help them move faster without compromising on security or quality.

This isn’t just about replacing GOV.UK PaaS. It’s about creating a best-in-class platform that enables teams to build, innovate and deliver faster. Achieving this level of maturity takes collaboration, iteration and user input.”

James Colhoun, DBT Chief Architect

Source: Delivering-seamless-migrations-and-a-future-ready-platform 

The results: Successful migration of critical services

We’ve now successfully migrated the majority of services, with no rollbacks and no major incidents. This includes several critical systems essential to DBT’s ability to operate and serve users. Our structured, collaborative approach meant we could scale migrations quickly and safely, while continuously improving the process.

Key outcomes include:

• no service rollbacks during the migration, with smooth transitions for even the most complex, public-facing services.
• strong delivery pace, made possible through embedded support, automation, and real-time coordination.
• high team confidence, supported by dedicated migration engineers and clear, tested cutover processes.
• The platform provides service teams with greater autonomy. By enabling self-service tools, developers can manage and deploy their services independently, reducing friction and speeding up delivery.
• with built-in security features, the new platform meets strict government compliance standards. Flexible governance policies also ensure the services are compliant without limiting agility.
• the platform can now scale with DBT’s needs. It’s designed to handle increased demand as services and users grow, remaining cost effective and efficient.

Migrating a complex digital service such as ours inevitably involves managing uncertainty. If we had any worries about that, our platform migration team helped put our minds at rest. Their knowledge, experience and approach ensured a safe and successfully migrated platform. We’re very happy that our new platform performs as we’d hoped and offers a great deal more besides!” 

Paul Pepper, Software Engineer (Tariff Application Platform)

Source: Delivering-seamless-migrations-and-a-future-ready-platform 

What’s next?

Our journey with DBT didn’t stop at migrating critical services. Together, we’re continuing to evolve the platform. We’re improving onboarding, simplifying infrastructure and supporting teams to innovate faster and more securely.

For departments facing the end of GOV.UK PaaS or other large-scale migrations, this work shows what’s possible: with the right support, structured planning and focus on user needs, even the most complex estates can be transitioned smoothly.

For more information on the services we offer to central government visit our web pages.

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Our task was to bring all this data together into one platform and improve data insight for the adult social care sector. As a result it will be easier for providers of all sizes, councils and researchers to access and use the data.  By doing so, they’ll be able to better track care quality, identify gaps in services and plan more effectively. 

Working with Edge Health, we built a prototype and technical proof of concept(PoC). We gathered user feedback to help transform future care data use. Importantly, the PoC passed the Government Digital Service alpha assessment. It met all of the 14 standards, allowing us to proceed to the next phase (beta) of the project.

The challenge: Data interoperability

One of the main challenges is that care data is spread across many different systems, making it hard for providers to get a clear view of what’s happening. Data quality also varies. Especially for smaller providers who lack the time or tools to manage it well.

While bigger care providers have data analysts to help them understand the information, smaller providers struggle without that support. Health and social care systems don’t link up well either, which makes it difficult to coordinate services.

Our approach: Testing ideas results in successful alpha

The 10-week alpha phase focused on testing ideas and proving a unified platform could work:

User research: We spoke to about 20 local council analysts and care provider staff, from owners to managers and analysts, to understand their needs and shape the project’s direction.

Proof of concept: We successfully showed that the platform could pull in data from different sources, create key metrics and present useful insights. This helped us pass the Government Digital Service (GDS) alpha assessment, meeting all 14 required standards.

Iterative development: During this phase, we found that while local councils had access to some helpful tools, care providers were missing out on the data-driven insights they needed.

Solution: A unified data platform

We developed a platform to pull in data from multiple sources. This gives care providers and councils access to the same insights. Ultimately, by bringing data together, we’re aiming to create a more equitable playing field. A place where everyone can make informed decisions based on accurate, comprehensive information.

Results: data-driven insight for adult social care

Why Made Tech

• Sector knowledge: Made Tech’s has in-depth experience in both the health and social care industries. Our recent work with Skills for Care showed the value we could bring to this alpha and made us a clear choice for DHSC.
• Strong partnership: Working closely with Edge Health, experts in data analysis, made sure we could deliver insights that were both relevant and practical. We’ve successfully worked with a variety of partners on multiple projects and this experience has honed our skills in developing strong relationships.
• Agile methodology: Made Tech successfully introduced a faster, more agile and flexible way of working to the project.

Moving into beta

Our successful alpha passed the Government Digital Service (GDS) assessment, meeting the standards required to move to beta.  

We’re now starting beta with a private release and moving towards a full public launch.

Key developments include:

• Better accessibility and tech foundations – The platform is being built to be accessible and robust enough for wider adoption.
• Live minimum viable product (MVP) testing and improvement – Care providers and local authorities are using the platform, and we’re refining it based on their feedback.
• More useful data in one place – We’re making it easier for care providers to access a broader range of public data to support better care.
• Understanding the value for local authorities – We’re exploring how the platform can support local authorities, particularly in areas like commissioning and prevention.
• Considering AI features – We’re looking at how AI could be used to add value in future.

By breaking down data silos, we’re helping to create a future where everyone involved in adult social care can access the same valuable insights. This will ultimately lead to better care outcomes and more efficient service delivery across the sector.

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For years, primary care in England has relied on Lloyd George records. 70 million paper-based medical files scattered across GP practices, warehouses and other locations. This outdated system creates significant challenges. Transferring healthcare records between GPs can often take as long as 8 weeks, delaying crucial care. Lost or inaccessible patient records sometimes lead to devastating consequences, including harmful outcomes for patients.

In some cases, patients may miss out on life-saving treatment. Others could be unable to proceed with fertility treatments or not be able to access disability benefits if their GP can’t check their medical history.

The delays and administrative strain of paper records

The paper-based system also places a heavy administrative burden on GP staff, who spend hours searching, printing, and copying records – often repeating the same tasks for different systems. Interoperability between the home nation IT systems also causes more paper to be produced.  When transferring patient records between England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland the process is even slower than within England. The only option is to print records and physically send them, which can delay care and have a potentially serious impact on the health of the patient.

A digital patient records repository

NHS England’s Primary Care Support Services were already considering a digital solution for record storage – but they needed help making it happen. Made Tech, working as part of a blended team, helped turn their vision into reality. The goal was to scan the Lloyd George records and provide a secure, accessible digital repository. Some integrated care boards and GP practices had already scanned their records to free up physical space. However, they faced issues with secure storage and high costs.

The client’s initial plan ‘digitise on transfer’ got pushback from clinical systems suppliers over performance and cost.  This created an opportunity for the team to propose a more strategic, scalable solution that would support wider use cases and drive progress toward a fully paperless future.

We then worked with NHS England to develop the National Document Repository – a secure, centralised system that digitises paper records so they can be accessed instantly. The system:

• replaces manual searches and physical transfers with quick, secure digital access.
• prevents critical delays in patient care.
• reduces admin burdens for GP practices.

This solution is immediately helping healthcare teams deliver better care while saving time and money.

Our approach: putting users first

Results: faster patient record transfers

What’s next?

Driving adoption and user engagement

The success of the National Document Repository (NDR) depends on its adoption by GP practices and healthcare providers. Ongoing user research and feedback sessions will continue to shape improvements, making the system even more intuitive and effective. The team will work closely with practices to provide guidance on integrating the repository into daily workflows.

Exploring more use cases

While Lloyd George records are the immediate priority, the repository has the potential to support a variety of other paper-based medical documents. Whether it’s maternity records, imaging reports, or specialist referrals, expanding its use could significantly enhance efficiency across multiple areas of healthcare.

The journey towards a fully paperless NHS is well underway. By continuously refining and expanding the capabilities of the National Document Repository, we’ll be helping healthcare providers focus on what matters most – delivering better patient care.

For more information on the health and life sciences services we offer visit our web pages.

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