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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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.

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In January 2024, NHS England launched the Pharmacy First initiative, enabling over 10,000 pharmacies to treat common conditions such as sinusitis, earache, shingles and urinary tract infection (UTI) without the need for a GP appointment or prescription.

To ensure patient records remain accurate and up-to-date, pharmacies need to be able to share consultation data with GPs. Without a digital solution, this data sharing often relies on outdated methods like phone calls or faxes, leading to delays and potential mistakes.

Interoperability has long been a challenge for the NHS. With multiple systems and suppliers in place, making sure that patient data flows smoothly between both services is critical for both safety and efficiency.

The NHS Direct Care API Team asked us to develop a standardised approach, ensuring data could flow seamlessly between pharmacies and GPs with the click of a button. Our role involved setting clear standards, assuring supplier compliance and conducting thorough testing.

Our approach: streamlined data sharing

• Defined clear standards: We started by developing detailed technical specifications outlining how the code should be written and how the systems should communicate. These were designed to ensure consistency, security and accuracy in data sharing. 
• Supported suppliers: We worked closely with 6 suppliers (2 GP and 4 pharmacy system suppliers). Our experienced team, composed of technical architects, business analysts, delivery managers and user researchers held regular sessions to answer their questions, resolve technical issues and ensure their builds met the required standards.
• Technical assurance: We tested the solutions against strict technical standards to ensure they were secure and reliable.
• Clinical assurance: Clinicians reviewed the systems to confirm they worked correctly and safely for real-world use.
• Streamlined testing: We introduced a more agile process to speed up clinical assurance. Instead of lengthy, fragmented reviews, we organised joint sessions where all suppliers, clinicians and safety engineers could review the solutions together. This reduced delays and encouraged faster issue resolution.
• First-of-type rollout: Once the solutions passed all tests, we supported a trial phase in real-world settings. This ensured the systems performed as expected and allowed us to address any final issues before a wider rollout.

Results: improved patient safety

Since launch, up to 4 million people have accessed the Pharmacy First service, many through GP referrals. Impressively, only 8% of patients using the service are referred back to their GP. This highlights the effectiveness of pharmacists in managing conditions independently.

Specifically, the solution has helped to:

Next steps for Made Tech and NHS England

NHS England has now asked us to help them improve the end-to-end assurance process, building on our deep understanding of the system. We’ll streamline implementation, enhance standards and governance, and scale these improvements across healthcare services to ensure faster, more reliable solutions that benefit patients and staff nationwide.

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23.5 million patients are now able to access and view their health records online. The NHS has taken big steps forward in improving transparency and empowering patients. However, this shift has also introduced challenges for GP practices in managing the sensitive and confidential information held within the patient records.

Some patient information needs to stay private for safeguarding, legal, or clinical reasons. This includes sensitive details about mental health, domestic abuse, or other personal circumstances.

With the expanded access to patient records, questions arose about how to ensure such sensitive information is properly hidden from view or redacted.

Redaction doesn’t remove this information from the patient’s record. It simply restricts access to it or ‘hides’ it in the online viewer. This means that sensitive details remain private and aren’t unintentionally shared.

GP2GP allows healthcare workers to transfer patients’ electronic health records securely and quickly. This ensures seamless transitions between old and new practices when patients change GPs. However, the system lacked functionality to flag parts of the record restricted by the patients’ previous practice. There was a risk that sensitive information could inadvertently be shared when patient records were transferred to a new practice. This could potentially breach confidentiality and undermine trust in the system.

Our approach: collaborating with healthcare experts

To tackle this, we worked with NHS England and key partners to update the GP2GP service. Our solution allowed GP2GP to include the restrictions put in place by previous GPs, to make sure that any sensitive details stay protected. This flag now sticks with the record during transfers, so the new practice knows what was previously limited from patient access. 

At the outset, we formed working groups that included clinicians, safeguarding leads and technical experts to address everyone’s needs. Clinicians helped keep vital care information accessible. At the same time, safeguarding leads made sure sensitive details remained hidden from vulnerable patients who shouldn’t have access to them.

Because this was a high-priority project, we quickly gathered input from the right stakeholders to design the solution and, within just 2 weeks, we went from identifying the problem to recommending a solution that worked for everyone involved.

We also collaborated closely with primary care system suppliers to integrate the solution seamlessly into their existing systems. By updating messaging standards and working with all the right people, we made sure everything would be compatible across the NHS.

Throughout the project, we managed the testing and provided support to make sure everything met the security and functionality requirements. We acted as central point of coordination, working hand-in-hand with the suppliers to keep things moving smoothly.

Results: managing restricted information efficiently

Built to work seamlessly with NHS systems, the solution now makes it easy for GP practices to manage restricted information without slowing down patient care or adding extra steps.

Why Made Tech

With our NHS partnerships, data security expertise, and know-how in managing sensitive patient data, Made Tech was the right team for the job. By working closely with NHS stakeholders, we’ve delivered a secure and reliable solution that puts patient privacy and safety first.

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The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) uses an application called Bichard 7 to receive court hearing outcomes. It then adds them to the Police National Computer. It processes 7,000 to 10,000 cases a day and its users include the police and HM Revenue & Customs. 

Bichard 7 provides access to all 47 police forces across England and Wales so they can correct data errors and complete any manual actions as needed. Without the system, police forces would manually track arrest warrants and bail denials. 

We came on board to help MoJ with application modernisation of Bichard 7, migrate it onto AWS and provide an improved 24/7 support service through our managed service.

Modernisation to deliver efficiency and security

As part of this application modernisation project, we designed a unique transition plan for Bichard 7 based on our knowledge of the AWS transfer process. 

To find out user needs and process requirements we watched how its users interacted with the system. This helped us design a new transition process, one that was reviewed by relevant teams and delivered with no impact on existing users. 

To minimise the existing manual intervention needed from police forces while shortening data correction times, we introduced:

During this transition all runbooks and playbooks were reviewed, upgraded and moved into GitHub. Knowledge articles were also created to help service desk handlers quickly resolve user queries.

Managed service for uninterrupted support and improvement

Our fully security check-cleared managed services team provides support and continuous improvement. This managed service consists of 24/7 365 days a year Level 2 support with a combined Level 2 and 3 during standard working hours. 

With great support and guidance from Made Tech’s managed services team, I’m delighted to say this project has been a huge success. A great level of dedicated work has helped us modernise, migrate to AWS and rollout ongoing improvements to meet user needs.

Dom Tomkins, Ministry of Justice Service Owner

Our support increases following a significant release or if external events need it. By working closely with police users and policy makers we schedule technical changes and service improvements at times that work for them. Our managed services team are responsible for operating and delivering:

• knowledge management
• incident management
• problem management
• proactive monitoring and reporting 
• service requests
• capacity management 
• vulnerability management
• service reporting

We also make regular changes to the service to improve user experiences and respond to changes in government policy. To do this, our analysts track data collected through the service desk to identify incident trends. User researchers also work closely with 30 representatives from English and Welsh police forces to inform future work and get early feedback.

Finally, all testing and releasing new software is now automated, with different processes used for a “small change” versus a “major release”. This way 100% uptime is maintained during deployments and there’s no impact on users or the public. 

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Founded in 1939, Citizens Advice is an independent organisation that provides confidential support and advice to people experiencing legal, debt, consumer, housing or other issues across the United Kingdom. It was founded with two key aims at its core: to provide the advice people need for the problems they face, and to improve the policies and principles that affect people’s lives. 

Citizens Advice approached us to collaborate with them on a discovery phase for their Witness Service. The Witness Service at Citizens Advice provides free and independent support for both prosecution and defence witnesses in every criminal court in England and Wales. Trained volunteers provide practical information about the court process as well as emotional support to help witnesses feel more confident when giving evidence.

Citizens Advice needed our help to explore how they could enable a seamless experience for witnesses using the service, and increase the efficiency and sustainability of Witness Services technology and operations.

Our approach

We worked within the existing team at Citizens Advice to run a technical discovery to build a series of actionable recommendations for the organisation to take forward for future digital expansion of the Witness Service.

We began by building a picture of the ‘as-is’ architecture used to support the service, building a blueprint that we refined on a weekly basis. This included a detailed review of existing documentation covering the technical landscape, followed by an extensive round of interviews with key stakeholders to identify goals, pain points and user journeys. We also listened to anonymised witness calls to gather further insight.

We assessed the security, maintainability and technical debt of the existing application and infrastructure. From this analysis, we were able to provide a number of recommendations to take forward, including quick wins to improve performance, as well as provide longer-term strategies to expand services.

We’ll use technology to enable a positive experience for everyone… and continue to design and develop our products and services based on what our users need.

From the Citizens Advice Strategic Framework 2019 – 2022

Results we achieved together

During our six-week discovery, we delivered a report that outlined key next steps to improve the scalability, reliability, and sustainability of the Witness Service. This included a technical assessment of their current system to provide a future roadmap for the service, as well as identifying application performance issues.

As a result, Citizens Advice was able to use our Discovery findings as the foundation to immediately improve their Witness Service performance, as well as informing future programmes of work.

• Completed Discovery within 6 weeks
• Identified pain points within Witness Service processes and areas for improvement
• One-team, agile approach to Discovery
• Defined a future roadmap to expand the digital footprint of the Witness Service
• Identified ways to optimise performance short-term

The Made Tech team worked very quickly to build credibility and understanding from Day 1 on the Witness Service discovery project. They were enthusiastic, understanding of organisational complexities but also great at challenging us to think differently about the service and technology. Their recommendations were pragmatic, well-considered and we are finding following these suggestions already beneficial to our organisation.

Scott Painter
Product Lead at Citizens Advice

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