What was harder was ensuring all of that activity translated into better services for citizens.

Made Tech’s Product Management expertise helped shift the emphasis. Over the course of the work, the citizen-facing teams moved from a model dominated by fixed deliverables towards one built around clearer outcomes, stronger evidence and a more joined-up product strategy. Product Managers became more influential in deciding where effort should go because stakeholders had greater confidence in how those decisions were being made.

The difference could be seen in the quality of the work reaching citizens and, crucially, in the team’s ability to respond when a major new app launch put that approach under pressure.

Creating room for genuine Product Management

Historically, agreements could be very specific about the solution the digital teams were expected to deliver. With a roadmap filled with predefined commitments and deadlines, Product Managers had limited scope to ask where the services needed to go next, which citizen needs mattered most or how different opportunities should be prioritised.

Made Tech worked alongside the Met Office’s Product Managers to strengthen their strategic role. The team developed a clearer strategy for the citizen services, considered where the biggest gaps lay and introduced more deliberate ways of deciding what deserved attention next.

Data and insight became central to that change. Bringing the data and insights capability much closer to Product Management meant evidence could shape the roadmap rather than simply describe performance afterwards.

Quarterly planning and prioritisation became more thoughtful as a result. Product Managers could bring together strategy, user needs, available evidence and measures of success, then use those factors to make choices between competing demands. As one of the team put it, they felt they were now working on more valuable things than they had before.

Shifting the conversation towards outcomes

One of the most significant changes came in the relationship with the internal customer groups responsible for agreeing what the citizen services should achieve.

Instead of commitments being framed primarily around specific features, the conversation increasingly moved towards outcomes. Objectives could focus on reaching more people through the app or improving its ratings, while leaving the product team to determine how best to get there.

That gave Product Managers more freedom, but also more responsibility to show why one decision was stronger than another and demonstrate that citizen evidence was driving the roadmap.

Made Tech helped build that confidence through much closer engagement. A good example is with the communications team around the launch of the Met Office digital app.  Conversations that had previously happened only occasionally became far more regular, with the team sharing the data behind its decisions and bringing relevant teams into the thinking earlier.

As those relationships developed, Product Management became better understood. Those involved could still challenge priorities and remain closely involved, but they no longer needed to prescribe the answer in order to feel confident that progress was being made.

For citizen-facing products, where there will always be competing views about what should happen next, that gave the organisation a stronger way of working through those views without losing sight of the people using the service.

Joining up around the citizen experience

The citizen experience depended on far more than the digital product team alone.

Changes to the app and website involved specialist teams providing the underlying information, alongside communications and marketing colleagues helping citizens understand what was changing. Those groups had not always worked closely together, and in some cases were pursuing different commitments or operating to very different delivery rhythms.

Made Tech’s Product Management approach brought those relationships closer to the product process. Teams were involved earlier, with kick-offs and ongoing conversations helping everyone understand the user need, the intended journey and the constraints that could affect delivery.

It did not make every part of the Met Office work in the same way. Some specialist teams continued to operate on much longer release cycles than the digital teams. What changed was that those differences were understood earlier and could be factored into decisions.

Communications and marketing colleagues were also brought much closer to delivery, understanding why changes were being made rather than simply being asked to explain a finished product. Over time, colleagues outside the digital teams became increasingly comfortable with the language and rhythm of agile delivery themselves.

Product Management gave those different disciplines a clearer point around which to align, connecting what citizens needed with the technical and organisational work required to provide it.

Product Management when the pressure arrived

The value of those changes became particularly visible during the launch of a major new version of the app.

As the new service reached citizens, negative feedback increased sharply. Given the profile of the product, concern quickly travelled through the organisation and at one stage there was pressure to roll the release back.

The team now had a much stronger basis on which to respond. Product Managers worked with the data and insights team to understand what citizens were actually struggling with and translated those findings quickly into delivery priorities.

The established stakeholder relationships mattered too. The team could explain what it was seeing and why continued improvement was the right response. Senior leaders could see the evidence, the decisions being made from it and the speed with which citizen feedback was being addressed.

The team continued releasing improvements, the peaks in negative feedback reduced and the service moved towards a much more stable position.

It was a practical demonstration of the Product Management capability Made Tech had helped develop. Strategy, data, stakeholder trust and multidisciplinary working came together to help the organisation make better decisions about a live public service at exactly the point when those decisions mattered most.

A stronger product capability

The citizen-facing teams now have a clearer sense of where their products are going and a stronger way of deciding how to get there. Outcomes increasingly shape the work instead of predetermined solutions; data and insight sit closer to prioritisation, and stakeholders have greater visibility of why product decisions are being made.

There is also a more joined-up relationship between the teams involved in delivering the citizen experience. Product Management has helped bring those different perspectives together without pretending every discipline has the same priorities or ways of working.

Made Tech helped create the conditions in which Product Managers could do more than administer a roadmap. They could understand what citizens were experiencing, make informed choices about where to act and bring the wider organisation with them.

For public sector organisations, that is where the value of strong Product Management becomes tangible: retaining enough strategy, evidence and flexibility to keep improving the

The post How Product Management improved citizen-facing digital services for a government organisation 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.

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.

The post Free School Meals Eligibility service, delivering for young lives appeared first on Made Tech.

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

The post How Barking & Dagenham saves a week of admin every month with AI-powered Awaab’s Law summaries appeared first on Made Tech.

Camden Council faced significant challenges managing damp and mould issues within its housing stock, receiving 113 complaints related to damp and mould in 2022.

The existing reporting system, the ‘Camden Account’, did not have a way to report the issues, instead, residents were signposted to a form that was not mobile optimised resulting in a poor user experience and issues with triaging and booking the work. 

 This process led to delays in addressing issues, exacerbating health risks for tenants and potentially breaching upcoming legislative requirements under Awaab’s Law, which mandates prompt action on damp and mould hazards. ​

Approach

To address these challenges, Camden Council partnered with Made Tech to implement a more streamlined and user-friendly reporting system. Using Made Tech Repair’s Camden have improved their ability to effectively triage damp and mould cases while offering an improved user experience for their residents. The key features of this new approach included:​

Photo uploads

Residents can upload photos of the affected areas, providing the repairs team with clear visuals to assess the severity and nature of the problem.​

“With photos added to each repair, our team can easily assess the severity of the issue, allowing us to deploy the right person and, hopefully, the right solution in an appropriate timeframe.” – Amy Martin, Housing Repairs Contact Centre Team Manager

Improved triaging

The system flags urgent cases based on answers about the health of the household, ensuring that severe issues are escalated immediately so Camden can meet its legal obligations under Awaab’s Law.

No login required

Residents can report their damp and mould issues from the same system as other repairs without needing an account, simplifying the process and encouraging prompt reporting.​

Standardised design

The platform adheres to government guidelines and is based on user research, ensuring ease of navigation and a familiar, trustworthy interface.​

“We’re happy with everything Made Tech has done so far. They’ve listened to our needs and have continuously innovated and problem-solved to improve the system in a timely manner. Being a customer means that we get to share this feedback and shape the product which we don’t always get to do with our software suppliers.” – Juliana, Product Delivery Manager

Results

The implementation of our damp and mould module has yielded significant benefits for both Camden Council and its residents:​

Enhanced triaging

The ability to upload multiple photos along with the household health questions we ask has improved the repairs team’s capacity to assess and prioritise cases based on severity, ensuring that urgent issues are addressed promptly.​

Improved preparedness

With detailed information and visuals available before attending a repair, Camden’s Mould Inspectors are better equipped to address the specific issues, leading to more effective and efficient repairs.​

Compliance with Awaab’s Law

The system’s features facilitate timely responses to damp and mould reports, helping Camden Council meet its legal obligations under Awaab’s Law, which requires social landlords to investigate and fix dangerous damp and mould within set time periods. ​

By adopting our module, Camden Council has significantly improved its response to damp and mould issues, enhancing tenant satisfaction and ensuring compliance with legislative requirements.

The post Helping Camden Council address damp and mould cases faster than ever appeared first on Made Tech.

The NHS wants to give patients better digital access to their health records through the NHS App. Until recently, patients could only see new information that the GP added, but not past records.

We were brought in to look at how to improve patient access to this information whilst at the same time reducing any risks. The project focused on 2 key areas.

1. Reducing risks for vulnerable patients

Our approach: developing designs alongside safeguarding professionals

The NHS wanted us to research and design an NHS App feature that lets patients control what health information they see in the App. To address this, we conducted interviews and workshops with safeguarding professionals both in primary and secondary care. We consulted technical experts about current NHS IT system limitations. We also looked at how smartphone users already protect sensitive information on commonly used apps.

Based on these findings, we suggested a phased approach with 3 key improvements:

• short-term: update the NHS App with guidance on how patients can ask their GP to limit access to their records.
• medium-term: let patients reduce the level of detail they see in the NHS App without needing GP intervention, reducing workload for practices and providing immediate control to patients.
• long-term: develop a ‘redaction’ feature that allows patients to hide specific details without removing them from records.

We shared designs and user flows with stakeholders. The phased approach was well received and the NHS are now considering next steps to implement these features.

Results: giving patients control and easing GP workloads

Our work will result in several key benefits for both patients and the NHS.

Benefits for patients

Benefits for the NHS

2. Access to past health records on the NHS App

The NHS also wanted to make past health records easier to access. Prior to July 2023, access to Historic Detailed Coded Records (HDCR) was limited to only 3.9% of the population. Expanding access to HDCR could provide patients with more comprehensive insights into their health.

More access could help patients manage their health and reduce strain on the NHS, but some worried it would burden GP practices. The Made Tech team evaluated these concerns and explored how a request feature within the NHS App might work.

Our approach: user-research to improve processes

The team:

• conducted user research to establish patient needs and clinician concerns
• analysed the existing process for access requests
• worked with NHS England teams to align with other projects such as Mobile First, GP Connect, and the Data Saves Lives strategy
• interviewed patients and visited GP practices to see how things currently work

Results: giving patients valuable insights into their health

Expanding access to Historic Detailed Coded Records would provide patients with valuable insights into their health, including conditions / diagnoses, medications, allergies, and immunisations. 

For the client, we found ways to improve efficiency. By following best practices, GP staff could cut the processing time to approve patient requests to access their historical data by up to 40 minutes per request, resulting in quicker access to vital health data for patients and saving time for healthcare providers.

Our research demonstrated that improved digital access provides benefits to both patients and NHS staff. Off the back of the research we recommended 15 key actions. Here are some of the most important ones:

This project will make it easier for patients to access their NHS records while keeping their information safe. By giving patients more control over what they see, we can reduce risks and streamline processes for GP practices. The NHS is now looking at how to implement these improvements, which will make it easier and safer for people to manage their health information.

For more information on the healthcare services Made Tech offers, take a look at our Health and Life Sciences webpages.

Digital transformation

Digital transformation is more than tools and buzzwords. Rethink how you deliver digital services to make them more accessible, efficient and better for users.

Health and life sciences

As patient numbers rise, digital technology can help you lighten the load.

Speak with an expert

The post Giving patients more control over their NHS App data appeared first on Made Tech.

The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (LBBD) and their housing repairs subsidiary BD Group needed to modernise its repairs reporting system to reduce manual processing, improve first-time fix rates, and offer tenants a seamless way to report and track repairs. Their existing digital channels were underused, with only 15% of tenants preferring to report repairs online. This left contact centres overwhelmed and tenants frustrated with long wait times. Traditional system implementations in housing are often slow, expensive, and complex, but LBBD needed a solution quickly – waiting years wasn’t an option.

Approach

To modernise its repairs service quickly and efficiently, LBBD and BD Group partnered with Made Tech to deliver a fully integrated, user-friendly system in just 12 weeks. The new platform simplifies the reporting process, reduces admin, and gives tenants more control over their repairs. Key features include:

• Seamless integrations with their housing management and scheduling systems.
• A simplified tenant experience, making online repairs reporting easy and intuitive.
• Live status tracking, allowing tenants to monitor their repairs in real time.
• Self-service appointment rescheduling and cancellations, reducing admin for contact centres.
• 24/7 accessibility, enabling tenants to report repairs anytime, with 42% of requests now made outside working hours.

Results

The new system has transformed how LBBD tenants report and track repairs, significantly increasing adoption and efficiency. With fewer manual processes and faster response times, both residents and the council are seeing the benefits:

• 69% of tenants now prefer reporting repairs online, unlocking a clear demand for digital services.
• 3,000 repairs processed online in the first three months, significantly reducing manual admin.
• NPS score of 4.2/5, with tenants praising the system’s ease of use.
• Faster response times and reduced contact centre strain, as tenants can self-manage repairs.

LBBD, BD Group and Made Tech’s rapid implementation proves that housing providers don’t need to wait years for modern repairs systems. With the right technology and approach, councils can go live in months—improving tenant experience while saving time and costs.

The post LBBD goes live in 12 weeks with fully integrated online repairs reporting system appeared first on Made Tech.

The Met Office National Severe Weather Warning Service (NSWWS) warns of the impacts caused by severe weather. The severity of the Met Office weather warnings is based on the level of impact and the likelihood of these impacts occurring. The combination of level of impact and likelihood results in a red, amber or yellow weather warning colour.

Red weather warnings are the most severe (high impact and likelihood) followed by amber and then yellow. The weather warnings could be issued for various conditions: for example, rain, thunderstorms, wind, snow, lightning, ice, extreme heat, and fog.

Typically the release of weather warnings can drive significant quantities of traffic to the Met Office website over a very short period of time, for example, 2018’s “Beast from the East”.

The challenge

Spikes in internet traffic caused significant strain on the Met Office’s public website. The existing solution was not able to meet demand quickly enough resulting in significant downtime with large parts of the website, including NSWWS, becoming unavailable.

Our approach

Working in partnership, the blended team identified a series of possible causes of the sub-optimal performance during weather warning initiated internet traffic spikes:

• Ineffective implementation of maps
• Overly complicated calls to the Content Management System (CMS)
• Manual scaling required by third-party CMS provider
• Delays and miscommunications about manual scaling caused misalignment between CMS resources and demand; for example, Kubernetes pods were reduced to ‘normal’ levels prematurely resulting in additional downtime

Improving website resilience

Improving website resilience during weather warnings was our primary concern. The understandably complicated requests from the maps were difficult to cache and rapidly drained available resources from the CMS making other parts of the website unresponsive.

After reviewing the implementation, we were able to simplify the requests originating in the maps and, therefore, improve the cacheability of the requests to the CMS. The improved cacheability reduced the number of calls that ‘missed’ the cache and needed to be served by the CMS during traffic spikes.

Building decoupled, auto-scaling resilience

The work to improve the resilience highlighted the tight coupling of the NSWWS pages with other, less critical parts of the website. Made Tech’s solution was to build a standalone NSWWS website decoupled from the main website.

We rebuilt the NSWWS website using our established best practices:

• Test Driven Development to assure code quality and service segregation
• A decoupled, hexagonal architecture
• Infrastructure as code, allowing the creation of consistent environments and track changes in version control

We also decided to develop the new NSWWS website using Kotlin because it is an ergonomic, JVM-based language that enabled faster development whilst remaining compatible with the Met Office’s existing Java ecosystem and expertise.

The new NSWWS website runs on its own independent, automatically scalable, AWS infrastructure to deliver resilience during internet traffic spikes.

Results we achieved together

We released the new NSWWS website, with no noticeable impact to users, and our highly integrated approach means that the warnings appear as part of the main site.

Coping with the UK’s weather

To users, the new NSWWS website appears unchanged as part of the main site; however, it runs on its own independent, decoupled, auto-scaling infrastructure serving customers regardless of, and without impacting on, the performance of other parts of the website. Since going into Production, numerous weather warnings have been issued as storms battered the United Kingdom throughout the Winter ‘23-24.

The standalone service has seamlessly handled the increased load. In fact, the new solution has performed so well we are reducing the specifications of the underlying infrastructure and, therefore, the overall cost to the Met Office of providing the service.

The outlook moving forward

We’re working to ensure the NSWWS website continues to deliver for millions of users every day and we’re applying the success of this decoupling activity to other parts of the Met Office website (for example, forecast pages).

By reducing dependencies across the website, we’ll not only create services that are cheaper to run and easier to support, but we’ll deliver a robust and resilient public website to ultimately achieve the Met Office’s mission to help people ‘make better decisions to stay safe and thrive’ when it matters most.

Managed services

Lack of modernisation? Our managed services take away the stress of maintaining and supporting live digital and data services, applications and cloud infrastructure.

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The post Enhancing resilience to overcome website downtime during severe weather events appeared first on Made Tech.

In March 2022 we worked with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) to support the rapid design, build and iteration of the Homes for Ukraine service. The service needed to urgently meet the needs of sponsors (communities and local authorities) looking to help those fleeing the war in Ukraine.

Our approach

We wasted no time getting the project off the ground, delivering a minimum viable product in 2 weeks. As the needs of the project changed, our team grew to include diverse expertise spanning cloud and engineering, data, user-centred design and more.

Once the service went live, our collaboration with DLUHC continued as we worked on a monitoring and support service. Our team worked to make sure the service hit all uptime targets and incident response service level agreements (SLAs) to support sponsors quickly. We supported the service 24/7 and took an Agile approach to service management. This way we were able to make sure that ongoing development of the service and support of incidents on the live service were balanced.

Results we achieved together

We left the team with recommendations on transitioning from rapid response to a solid business as usual framework. This included different ways to scale the team as needs changed. As part of this we supported the transition of the service back to DLUHC. This included knowledge transfer to non-Made Tech team members and new senior management from DLUHC.

Following this we have continued to work with DLUHC to deliver further discovery and alpha phases to research and test new concepts for developing the service for the longer term to create a repeatable and reusable service should this type of a crisis happen again.

Working with policy makers

We bridged the gap between policy, digital delivery and service management using user insights to drive decision-making. We mapped the end to end service to help ease decisions for ongoing improvement, working closely with policy teams. The team can now make iterative changes to the service that improve the user experience while still responding quickly to policy changes.

Technology and features

• Ruby on Rails
• Running on GovPaaS
• Database is PostgreSQL
• Uses Redis for throttling and for delayed jobs using Sidekiq
• Sends notification emails (delayed job) via GOV.UK Notify
• Sends data to Foundry (Palantir Case Management System) via HTTP API
• Monitored with Prometheus
• Deployed via GitHub Actions
• Alerting and incident management via PagerDuty

Managed services

Lack of modernisation? Our managed services take away the stress of maintaining and supporting live digital and data services, applications and cloud infrastructure.

Central
government

As society becomes more digitally driven, government needs to meet citizen’s raised expectations by applying the culture, processes and technologies of the internet era.

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The post Homes for Ukraine appeared first on Made Tech.