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.

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.

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.

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.

Related services

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.

Get in touch

The post Migrating critical services at the Department for Business and Trade appeared first on Made Tech.

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.

Related services

Data and AI

Use data-driven insight to design and deliver better services to users and unlock the power of AI and Machine Learning.

Health and life sciences

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

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The post Successful alpha unlocks data for the Department of Health and Social Care appeared first on Made Tech.

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.

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

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When emergencies strike, every second counts. Which is why we worked with the Maritime Coastguard Agency (MCA) to build and support a vital service for users to register emergency beacons. These beacons support people using boats and aircrafts to alert search and rescue authorities to their location.

In this case study we’ll discuss the managed services support we’re providing for a stable, reliable service that helps MCA do what they do best. A project which has been the basis for work with 2 further MCA digital services.

Our approach to managed services support

Working closely with the MCA we set out to make sure the online service met their needs. This meant including features like comprehensive and accurate information on users and their beacons. It’s crucial that MCA can access and use this information quickly to pull reports, making sure all relevant data is accessible to services such as coastguard rescue. 

We also wanted to make sure the service continues to meet the needs of users and the MCA over time, so we discussed the level of ongoing support they’d need. This involved taking into consideration the criticality of the service, budget, stability of the applications infrastructure and its data.

Seamless support and open communication

We set up multiple channels for MCA to raise any support requests with our managed services team. These included email, our online portal, team calls and messaging. We also actively monitor the service, using tools such as Pingdom, so our engineers can address issues as they come up.

Monthly service reviews give us a chance to improve our support by evaluating performance with MCA by sharing reports on SLA adherence, ticket resolution efficiency and forecasted works. In the last 12 months these reviews have revealed 100% SLA compliance on incident response time and service availability. 

As part of our support we provide a service delivery manager that’s visible and available. The delivery manager worked with MCA to agree ways of working that best suits the organisation. This included open communication channels and arranging dedicated calls to discuss ad hoc requests. These provide the space for regular ticket prioritisation and refinement sessions to determine which incidents and requests will provide the most value to the MCA and the users of the Beacons service. 

We use Zendesk (a service management tool) to streamline communication between MCA and our engineers. This encourages smooth collaboration on ad-hoc requests and minimises any friction.

Proactive monitoring

Risks identified by Made Tech or MCA are noted in a risk log. These are proactively monitored, progressed and addressed at service reviews. The team at MCA can also use Zendesk to request help themselves or ask questions, allowing us to quickly provide support whatever the nature of the issue.

The tickets we work on range from critical outages, service improvements and incidents only affecting one user. A recent example is an error that caused beacon battery expiry dates to display incorrectly on downloadable certificates.

Through investigation it was discovered that the data was also incorrect in other fields and only present on beacons registered within a specific time period. A fix was deployed and the incident was quickly resolved within SLA compliance.

Results we achieved together

Ensuring that our emergency beacon registration service is stable and reliable is essential for supporting search and rescue operations. Having a managed service in place allows us to respond quickly to incidents and maintain high service availability, which is critical when lives are at stake.

Beacons Service Owner

We’re proud to provide specialist engineering support on this critical service. We continually work with MCA’s technology team and other suppliers in our support role and governance responsibilities. This allows MCA to run new initiatives with minimum disruptions. Our collaborative approach means we continue to meet our goals and deliver high quality support for MCA and their users.

The ongoing support and open communication have been valuable in helping us meet the needs of both our organisation and the users of the service.

Beacons Service Owner

Further managed services with the MCA

We’re thrilled that the MCA has expanded our managed services support with 2 further services. These include Report Wreck Material (Droits). This is an online service where members of the public can report wreck materials found on the seashore or in tidal water. The second is Support for Maritime Training Service (SMarT). This government funded scheme supports courses approved by the MCA and the Merchant Navy Training Board.

Managed services

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

National security and public safety

National security and public safety organisations are turning to technology to help them respond to emergencies and keep people safe.

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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.