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.

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.

Through children and family services, communities are able to access the support they need locally. This can cover lots of areas from things like education to health and is crucial for helping people live healthy and happy lives. 

Dorset Council wanted to make sure their website was pointing people towards the great support available in the local area. And they had a particular focus on the support in place for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). We ran a discovery for the council around their website, finding ways to help families access the information useful to them quickly and easily.

Our approach

Dorset Council’s website pages for families had a lot of content filled with information for many different services and support. Our main focus was to find ways to make this a lot simpler to access and understand. 

We did a lot of research with families on the specific challenges they had with using the website. This helped the council team set a vision for the future of what they wanted the children and families service to look like. 

We analysed our research to come up with user statements that would help guide any fix or change we could make to the website. We built a set of principles based on these.

We also used these statements to create ‘how might we’ cards. These cards stated the problems we wanted to fix. Such as how might we make sure our website content is easy to understand and useful for children and families? The cards were a practical way to help us link together all the challenges faced by families. We also used them to brainstorm solutions in collaborative workshops. 

From there we knew there was a really big content design piece of work needed. We helped recognise some of the areas this could focus on which included, making sure content is up to date, in the right style and engaging. We then created a prototype that drew together all the ideas about Dorset Council’s SEND offer.

Results we achieved together

The prototype took in many of our recommendations, including:

• A network of support – creating a community of support with local organisations from across the Dorset Council area and bringing all that information together in one place 
• Search engine optimisation – making better use of council newsletters, marketing the support available and ranking higher in internet search results
• Tailored content – making sure the content on the website works for different users, whether that’s parents looking for information or young people searching for support 

We were able to help them work together and create one shared vision that puts families front and centre of all decisions. The team is now more experienced in working in user-centred ways. With new skill sets and resources they’re ready to run their own projects that will continue to improve the website for children and families.

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The post Improving child and family support appeared first on Made Tech.

A 406 MHz beacon supports people using boats and aircrafts to alert Coastguard rescue services in crisis situations. To help Search and Rescue in an emergency, it’s important that this beacon is registered with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).

This vital service is essential in saving lives when emergencies happen on land, air or sea. So it’s important that beacons are registered, and that owners’ information is kept up to date.

The MCA decided to build a new online digital service to replace their beacons registration database. The registration information is important in resolving false alarms, which make up 95% of all beacon activations. These can be costly if rescue services are dispatched.

The aim was to provide a quick and easy way for beacon owners to register and update their information, improving data quality, decreasing the cost of false alarms, and ultimately saving lives.

Our approach

Working as one team, MCA and Made Tech did extensive user research to understand the types of people that use this service and their different needs. This meant building and iterating a simple digital service that was quick and easy for beacon owners to use, in line with the government Service Standard.

It also meant understanding the needs of the back-of-house teams at MCA, including coastguard rescue services. Rescue services need to access essential information quickly, while having confidence it’s correct. It’s vital that details like a beacon’s unique ID number and its associated vehicle’s identifying information is readily accessible.

The project team migrated existing data into this new service. Through further research and iteration, we made sure all essential information was clear, accessible and searchable.

Results we achieved together

Now, beacon owners can self-serve entirely, whether registering a new beacon in minutes or updating their information. All registered information is now immediately available to search and rescue services.

Existing beacon owners can now register for the digital service to confirm that their existing information is correct and up-to-date.

Building a more convenient service improved the integrity of the data. This means the MCA and HM Coastguard are in the best position to help should a beacon owner need emergency support, or to quickly resolve a false alarm.

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The post When digital services save lives: register an emergency beacon online appeared first on Made Tech.

In recognition of their service, veterans in the UK are entitled to prioritised access to benefits and services. Working with the Office for Veterans’ Affairs (OVA) and GDS, we looked at ways to best support ex-service personnel to access the benefits they’re entitled to quickly, easily and consistently.

Our approach

We worked in an agile, scrumban way to build and test prototypes with veterans and those who provide services for them. This let us build on research from a discovery phase and understand veteran’s needs and any wider issues. We spoke to people remotely to make sure we got a good spread across the country and so we could engage with people who might struggle to attend in-person interviews. We also went to drop-in centres in person to meet people that might not be able or willing to engage digitally.

We consulted extensively with the services that need to confirm veteran status, looking at whether it might also be worth scaling and digitising existing services for 3rd parties to confirm veteran status.

We had to consider a wider landscape of factors involved in delivering a service that works for everyone. There were dependencies on other government work that needed to be factored into our work. These included:

• needing access to data that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) holds in legacy systems. As this needs to be very secure, we shared a great deal of evidence around our approach to data security.
• working closely with the team developing GOV.UK One Login – a new digital identity service that’s being developed with the aim of allowing citizens to access all the government services they need to use with one sign in.
• collaborating with different governmental departments (Ministry of Defence as well as the Office for Veterans’ Affairs) that are engaged with defence and ex-defence employees, taking into account and influencing policy to make sure the service meets user needs.

In compliance with the service standard, everything we did was open source and reused existing tools such as GOV.UK One Login, IPV and Notify. Tried and tested patterns and components developed by government departments like HM Revenue & Customs and the Home Office and using the GOV.UK Design System.

The Veterans’ ID card project is a priority for the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Passing the Alpha assessment in November was a significant milestone and could not have been done without the support, guidance and expertise from the team at Made Tech. The Made Tech team, working alongside Government Digital Service colleagues, have highlighted the best in agile digital design in government.

Tom Godfrey
Office for Veterans’ Affairs

Technology used

Node js:

• GOV.UK Frontend is a Node.js package delivering the Design System
• Certified OIDC FAPI client library available in NPM, providing Passport.js strategy
• Express is a convenient, well-understood framework

Splink:

• Open-source probabilistic record matching tool developed by MoJ
• Python (PySpark) library

Open ID connect:

• GOV.UK One Login is OIDC Provider

Hosting environment:

• Defence Digital’s DevSecOps service (RedHat OpenShift Container Platform)
• Kubernetes implementation

Results we achieved together

Following a successful alpha assessment, the ‘Apply for a Veteran ID card’ service is now progressing to Beta. This will progress in tandem with the development of the GOV.UK One Login service and be a great testing ground for that service’s ability to allow users to access government services more easily.

We’re delighted to have contributed to addressing a long-standing issue for veterans as part of the government’s pledge to make sure they receive the recognition they’re due. The whole team was committed to understanding veterans’ needs as fully as we could to make sure we designed a service that would truly make their lives easier.

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The post Helping veterans access benefits and services appeared first on Made Tech.

Since 2006 Skills for Care has been collecting and analysing data on the thousands of adult social care workforce across England. Providing data to the Department of Health and Social Care helps better inform the decisions made by government when it comes to the care sector.

Many of their data analysis processes were manual, taking considerable time and not maximising data-driven insights. We worked with the team to transform their data processes to better provide intelligence quickly and accurately.

Our approach

We implemented the Amazon Web Services (AWS) data ecosystem. This helped us modernise Skills for Care’s data architecture and processing. The goal was to streamline processes, automate routine analysis and free up valuable time.

Working with the analytics team we helped put in place best practices in data engineering. We also worked with them to apply machine learning to improve their workforce estimates.

The next stage was to help Skills for Care identify what was needed to continue to develop this new data pipeline long after we left. They’re now fully prepared to continue to build their pipeline as new data becomes available.

The data engineering prototype developed in this project is the first step toward a new way of working. It will help us to report more frequently and accurately to support faster and better decision-making.

Will Fenton
Analytics Manager

Results we achieved together

Crucially the team can now import data from many data sources automatically. This has helped enrich their data, fill data gaps and review at a more granular level – improving data quality. Now that there’s no need to manually process data that team are saving time and effort. Analysis that used to take 2 days can be done in 15 minutes and the datasets available for review are also extended from one to 10 years. Data visualisations can now also better inform analysis, making it much easier to see trends over time.

For Skills for Care it’s now increasingly quick and easy to test new ideas. They are better prepared to identify and fix issues earlier when data changes outside of the organisation happen.

Related services

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Gloucestershire has a wide range of mental health services for children and young people. We worked with the NHS in Gloucester to digitalise access to these services so people are put in touch with the service they need as quickly and easily as possible.

Collectively, these services help young people with depression, problems with food and eating, self-harm, abuse, violence or anger, and anxiety, among other difficulties. So it’s vital that people are directed to the right service as quickly and accurately as possible.

Our approach

User research led by Mace & Menter helped the team map user journeys. Working closely with the NHS in Gloucestershire, we delivered a technical strategy and developed the digital signposting service over an 8-month period. We created a web service and an accessible SMS text messaging service for children and young people to use. 

Although the SMS service will likely only be used by a small proportion of users, it was a critical element to implement with accessibility in mind. Some users may not have access to a computer or the internet – or even be prevented from accessing them – to get the support they need. Support for text messaging means the service is available to more people. We harnessed a range of GOV.UK Notify’s functionality, not only to send messages to end users, but also handle their replies. You can read more about the development of the SMS service in our blog post deep-dive.

We implemented a new website with a CMS to allow the team to manage content and add new services. We created a system that links to support services based on a series of questions which are easy to understand, and which the user can answer via the web or reply to via text message. We also added useful information about different types of mental health conditions and support available.

We embraced AWS Cloud Services and AWS Managed Services wherever possible, using them for both our hosting, integrations, release, and storage needs. This allowed us to produce a reliable, scalable, and secure service that met our client requirements.

Results we achieved together

• By adopting user-centred ways of working, the team made the information needed to access mental health services easier to find and understand.
• The service is secure and resilient, and keeps users’ data safe.
• It’s now simpler and easier for NHS teams to maintain up-to-date information.
• Other NHS teams can reuse the software code for other services.

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The post Making NHS Gloucestershire’s mental health services more accessible to children and young people appeared first on Made Tech.

Local authorities spend around £30 million annually handling housing repair calls, with about half of these calls being deemed ‘avoidable contact’. These are calls from residents to chase up an appointment or re-report a problem a previous visit didn’t fix. 

As the UK’s housing stock ages and the responsibilities of councils increase with the introduction of the new Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM) and Safety and Quality Standards, councils need to create cost savings and drive efficiencies where possible. 

We saw ample opportunity to do this by creating a streamlined online repairs reporting process that eliminated the need to report and manage the repair by calling the council. A view that was shared by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) which funded the project on the basis that other councils could access Housing Repairs Online.

Our approach

One of the key parts of this project was to build a service that was easy to use and accessible to drive channel shift away from calls to Housing Repairs Online’s 24/7 repair reporting service.

To do this, we tested every aspect of the design, wording and flow with residents and mixed digital literacy groups – something we still do today with Made Tech Repairs and our other housing products.

As a result of their feedback, we removed pictures and icons from the interface and asked residents a set of questions instead. This made it easier for residents to navigate and allowed for more accurate reporting.

We also enabled residents to upload photos. This made it easier for repairs managers and maintenance teams to triage repairs and improved first-time fix rates because repairs teams could be sure they were equipped with the right tools and materials before setting out to each job.

Finally, to help improve access rates and reduce the burden on residents waiting in all day for a repair, we added the ability for them to choose a half-day appointment slot. We found that this contributed to reducing follow up calls from residents asking where their repair person was. 

We developed the service iteratively, using feedback from City of Lincoln Council, other councils, and residents who joined our regular ‘show-and-share’ sessions to put forward their thoughts and ideas.”

Our engineers built the service using the GOV.UK Design System so that Housing Repairs Online felt familiar to residents and used Microsoft Azure Cloud, which can integrate with the on-premises housing management and scheduling systems. 

Thanks to the hard work of City of Lincoln Council and the Made Tech team, we’ve developed a new service that improves services for our tenants in Lincoln. We’ve put user research at the heart of the service, and I’m proud of the work the teams have done to make this service accessible to those who need it.

Cllr Donald Nannestad
Portfolio Holder for Quality Housing at City of Lincoln Council

Results we achieved together

Since its launch in May 2022, Housing Repairs Online has delivered impressive results:

• Inbound repairs calls decreased by 67% within 3 months.
• Online repair submissions surged from 3% to 28% in the same period.
• Reporting a repair online takes an average of just 3 minutes and 54 seconds, compared to the 18-minute average by phone.
• The cost to handle a repair report dropped from £3.12 to £1.15, saving the council approximately £60,000 annually, with projected savings of £19 million across local government.

Our decisions, informed by stakeholder feedback enabled City of Lincoln Council to achieve their goals of creating cost savings by reducing calls, decreasing manual intervention, and increasing access and first-time fix rates. 

By working in the open we’ve helped other councils learn from our decisions and we’ve gone on to deploy Housing Repairs Online at Hackney and Newark & Sherwood District Council. 

We’ll be extending what the service can do, including cancelling or amending appointments, requesting repairs to communal areas, and, most recently, adding a Damp and Mould module to help manage and monitor these cases. You can find the most up-to-date version of Housing Repairs Online, now called Made Tech Repairs here. 

Housing Repairs Online, which is available on GitHub has been funded by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’s (DLUHC) Local Digital Fund and is accessible to other local authorities who may wish to reuse and adapt.

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The post Cutting calls and boosting online housing repair reporting at City of Lincoln Council appeared first on Made Tech.

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) provides a service to the NHS to handle blood donation and organ donation. From public encouragement and donation collection to diagnostic services and pioneering research, the organisation is at the frontline of supporting hospital blood and transplant needs across the UK.

During the pandemic, NHSBT launched its Convalescent Plasma Programme. This was a clinical trial to collect donor blood plasma from members of the public who had recovered from Covid-19 in order to help patients who were struggling to develop an immune response. 

However, finding eligible donors at scale proved challenging. NHSBT needed a solution to help them scale up their donor selection process quickly and efficiently, and to better identify potential donors with high-grade Covid-19 antibodies.

Our approach

NHSBT knew they wanted to automate much of their process of contacting, screening, and securing potential donors. To achieve this, it needed to move away from using a call centre for communications, and implement more efficient screening processes that better identified eligible members of the public without the need to visit a donor centre.

We worked closely with the team at NHSBT to map out their existing service and identify user needs for patients, test providers, labs, and contact centre agent users. As a result, we designed a new end-to-end service to help NHSBT scale up their plasma collection process.

We built new APIs that integrated with participating test providers and laboratories to automate the process, as well as the Gov.UK Notify platform for email, which helps organisations contact their service users.

Our solution was built on the organisation’s existing tech stack in a sustainable and easily manageable way, so that NHSBT could continue to support and repurpose it in the future.

Thank you all for your work on off-session sampling for convalescent plasma. You all have done a great job working as a team, especially considering the really tight timescales … and you have delivered!

Marian Zelman
Technology Lead at NHSBT

Results we achieved together

Working with NHSBT, we delivered a service that helped scale and optimise the organisation’s plasma donation process for convalescent patients during Covid-19.

This led to a substantial increase in public engagement. It also decreased the amount of ineligible donors progressing to the donation stage, and increased the amount of high titre blood plasma collected.

• Increased plasma donor recruitment
• Rapid scaling of key Covid-19 services
• Upskilled NHSBT team to enable them to build on their service in the future
• Collaborative delivery of a new digital service in accordance with GDS and NHS standards
• APIs used to automate service
• Launched within 10 weeks

It works brilliantly! Thanks to all of you for some awesome development that has really given NHSBT a fantastic product and a great legacy for the Convalescent Patient Programme.

Marcus Hinde
Product Owner at NHSBT

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Essex County Council (ECC) is one of the largest local authorities in the UK. To meet the goals set out in its digital strategy, the Council wanted to find a way to provide an even more efficient digital service to the people of Essex, while putting its IT users at the heart of technology decisions to make sure that the technology empowers staff to carry out their roles. 

ECC was previously relying on numerous public-facing and internal microsites which were run through different web platforms while also managing maintenance challenges with its main website – essex.gov.uk. Reliance on legacy technology and solutions were also having an impact on how the County Council were able to launch accessible digital services that met user needs. 

Wishing to make a viable case for improving technological delivery in the County Council, ECC wanted to understand how it might improve and where the challenges lay in doing so by conducting a digital discovery. 

Following a rigorous tendering process, in March, public sector delivery experts Made Tech were selected to conduct a three-month digital discovery.

Our approach

Following the completion of a kick-off exercise to explore the challenges, the digital discovery was undertaken through five, two-week sprint sessions conducted by the blended ECC and Made Tech team. These covered:

• Understanding the breadth of any issues faced to decide on the scope of the discovery
• Understanding the differences between microsites in respect to risk, and the essex.gov.uk site capabilities
• Rating the technical risk of each microsite and mapping how information across essex.gov.uk is accessed by residents
• Listing and prioritising opportunities and exploring solutions
• Presenting the findings of the discovery and putting forward recommendations for how to move forward

What made this discovery exercise different to others was that collaboration was put at the heart of the process, with the County Council and Made Tech working together as one single team, rather than in individual silos. Communication channels and shared documents were created from the outset, ensuring seamless collaboration and communication within the blended team. 

At the same time, this blended approach created an open and honest atmosphere, meaning that feedback on what was working, and what wasn’t, was determined and addressed by the team as a whole. This resulted in issues being identified and dealt with straight away, streamlining the discovery process and ensuring it was conducted in an efficient manner that everyone benefited from.

As a Council, we always look to ensure we have the best services in place for our staff and residents, maximising digital inclusion, while guaranteeing citizens’ money is prudently spent.

Cllr Christopher Whitbread
Cabinet Member for Finance, Resources and Corporate Affairs

Results we achieved together

The digital discovery was completed on schedule within three months. The ECC and Made Tech team found that legacy systems were seriously hampering its ability to maintain and support its online services, and crucially launch accessible digital services that would meet user needs. 

It was discovered that some of the Council’s microsites had a high technical risk but that most would be easy to migrate, while the sites also sat on multiple platforms which made management, updates and maintenance difficult. At the same time, it was found that many ECC user journeys were not built on essex.gov.uk and that the website’s full technical capabilities were not being used.

Essex County Council will now move on to the next stage of its digital transformation with the implementation of the recommendations outlined in Made Tech’s discovery process. This includes changes to procurement policy to ensure new online services meet Government Digital Service (GDS) service standards. The areas highlighted for improvement will enable the council to deliver a true digital first and user-centred service for local businesses and residents.

• Digital discovery completed within three months
• Collaborative process with a blended team approach
• Technical risks identified in microsites
• Identified key areas for improvement
• Helped build viable case for improving technological delivery in the County Council

Through working in a strategic partnership with Made Tech and harnessing its team’s expertise, our blended team has been able to identify key areas where we can [ensure we have the best services in place for our staff and residents]. This discovery has highlighted how we can improve our web offering so that we are able to meet the future challenges of the council with enhanced digital services, make cost savings and, most importantly, benefit our communities. We look forward to progressing our transformation and continuing to strive towards our goal of providing the best technological solutions possible.

Cllr Christopher Whitbread
Cabinet Member for Finance, Resources and Corporate Affairs

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