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.

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

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

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

Modernisation to deliver efficiency and security

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

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

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

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

Managed service for uninterrupted support and improvement

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

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

Dom Tomkins, Ministry of Justice Service Owner

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

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

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

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

Managed services

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

National security and public safety

In the need to do more with less, organisations are turning to technology to help them fight crime, respond to emergencies and keep people safe.

Speak with an expert

The post Modernisation at the Ministry of Justice 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.

Digi­tal serv­ice delivery

We support you at every point in the delivery lifecycle, right from defining the problem right through to the live services that solve them.

National security and public safety

In the need to do more with less, organisations are turning to technology to help them fight crime, respond to emergencies and keep people safe.

Speak with an expert

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

The Bichard 7 application was developed to receive information about the outcomes of court hearings and to add this to the Police National Computer. Although it is important software, there had been no code changes or new deployments to production for some years. Therefore the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) wanted to modernise the application, increase its maintainability and prepare it to be replatformed.

Our approach

The original application had been built by IBM but then moved to another support provider. As a result, when we began working on the application, it was clear that no-one understood how the code worked. Therefore our initial approach focused on understanding the codebase and documenting how and why the application worked as it did.

In order to get the application to a maintainable baseline, we started by replatforming the existing IBM stack on AWS, using test harnesses to verify that the behaviour had not regressed. This involved using Terraform to implement an Infrastructure as Code pipeline, which meant we could boot up the Bichard 7 application with a single command in Docker.

This allowed us to test the old artifact in production, while ensuring that all we had done was documented in the code.

Our users need fast, modern technology they can rely on so they can do their important work.

Tom Read
Chief Digital and Information Officer for the Ministry of Justice

Results we achieved together

The documentation and automation work we undertook turned an application that had handwritten notes for deployment into version controlled software that could be deployed to testing environments with a single command. As a result, the Bichard 7 application is maintainable, has a robust disaster recovery plan in place and is ready for the next stage of replatforming.

• Understood and documented legacy code
• Replatformed the IBM stack on AWS
• Refactored codebase for maintainability
• Established Infrastructure as Code pipeline
• End-to-end testing including test harnesses
• Boot up via a single command in Docker
• Version controlled software
• Ready for further replatforming
• Disaster recovery plan in place

Legacy application transformation

We support you at every point in the delivery lifecycle, right from defining the problem right through to the live services that solve them.

National security and public safety

In the need to do more with less, organisations are turning to technology to help them fight crime, respond to emergencies and keep people safe.

Speak with an expert

The post Modernising the court results system for Ministry of Justice appeared first on Made Tech.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) needed to build a digital service that helped grieving parents to pay funeral costs once they’d lost a child. This was an urgent No10 priority and the service, which makes it possible to make funeral cost claims online, needed to be delivered in a tight timeframe of just 6 weeks.

Our approach

The MoJ had done research and journey mapping but asked us to deliver a digital service within a tight timeline. We began by establishing mixed Made Tech/Civil Service teams, as some of the LAA team had left. We then focused on delivering the service at speed and decided that using the Form Builder to build the claims form was the best approach.

In order to do this, we had to ensure the Form Builder was fit for purpose and production ready. Therefore, we developed two work streams to operate in parallel, one for fixing the Form Builder and one for getting the claims form live. It involved the use of Kubernetes, Ruby, AWS and Electron JS, and reduced the development time of the service so the idea could be built into a public beta in just 6 weeks.

“How would we know if [UK government] digital services are getting faster? There are indications of ‘faster’ from things like MOJ getting the funeral costs service live in 6 weeks.”

Richard Pope, part of the Government Digital Service founding team

Results we achieved together

We built the idea into a public beta in just 6 weeks, meeting No10’s urgent need. Not only that, our work on Form Builder has resulted in it being used by other MoJ agencies to digitise paper-based processes. The tool is open sourced and available for all government departments to use.

• Service delivered in 6 weeks
• Made Tech/Civil Service mixed teams
• Open source solution usable across departments
• Digitisation of manual, paper-based process
• Open source tool for all departments
• Kubernetes, Ruby, AWS and Electron JS used

No grieving parent should be faced with the stress and worry of finding the money to cover the costs of their child’s funeral. I hope the Children’s Funeral Fund will bring an end to this.

Prime Minister Theresa May, June 2019

Digi­tal serv­ice delivery

We support you at every point in the delivery lifecycle, right from defining the problem right through to the live services that solve them.

National security and public safety

In the need to do more with less, organisations are turning to technology to help them fight crime, respond to emergencies and keep people safe.

Speak with an expert

The post Rapid digital service delivery at Ministry of Justice appeared first on Made Tech.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) wanted to build modern software capabilities in a team usually tasked with maintaining legacy applications in the Legal Aid Agency (LAA). The LAA was preparing to modernise legacy applications and hand over responsibility for some cloud-based applications to this team, so needed to prepare it for change.

Our approach

The technology skills enablement began with a small Made Tech team going onsite at the LAA to interview staff and observe working practices. During this time, we mapped capabilities and skills throughout the team, producing a skills matrix for every individual team member.

From here, we defined a new set of technology standards with LAA developers. We also helped restructure delivery teams so every individual was in a single team with valuable delivery goals. The Made Tech team then distributed themselves across these newly formed LAA teams, providing hands-on coaching and direction over the course of 6 months.

The Made Tech folk have had a real impact on the culture and capability of our team.

Luke Crosby
Head of LAA Digital

Results we achieved together

To date, we have trained 40 LAA team members in modern technology capabilities and ways of working. These include agile practices and a range of new languages, tools and processes, which have transformed how the agency delivers digital services.

• 40 LAA team members upskilled
• Agency restructured to improve tech approach
• Teams restructured for agile ways of working

Over 6 months, we embedded new languages, tools and ways of working.

• Ruby Python, GitHub and AWS
• Pair programming, code reviews, showcases and retrospectives
• Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery
• Test-driven development
• High speed iteration and fast product delivery

We want to build a deeply skilled digital and technology team and will achieve this by establishing strong digital professions based on the Government Digital Service (GDS) Digital, Data and Technology capability framework.

MoJ digital and technology strategy, November 2019

Digi­tal serv­ice delivery

We support you at every point in the delivery lifecycle, right from defining the problem right through to the live services that solve them.

National security and public safety

In the need to do more with less, organisations are turning to technology to help them fight crime, respond to emergencies and keep people safe.

Speak with an expert

The post Technology capability building at Ministry of Justice appeared first on Made Tech.

HMPPS Digital, within the Ministry of Justice, is responsible for digital and technology services covering prisons, probation and youth justice. They needed us to help support teams who were responsible for providing services to prison staff, offenders in custody and offenders’ families.

Our approach

Working with the team that operates the prisoner money service, we identified gaps in documentation and helped to fill them, so that code would be easier to maintain and would pose less risk in future. The documentation we worked on covered standard incident reporting, monitoring and procedures for new joiners, as well as other important areas. 

For the team working on prison visits and offender management, we helped them to prioritise workloads so they were spread more evenly across the team and did not overload individuals. By continually learning with the team, we helped to improve retrospectives so they educated the entire team about safety checks. In addition, we collectively boosted collaboration between teams in London and those based at the digital studio in Sheffield.

For prisoners and their families, the service decreased processing times by 80% thereby getting money to prisoners in a faster, cheaper and more efficient way.

From “No more cash, cheques or postal orders for prisoners” in the Inside Time National Newspaper for Prisoners & Detainees

Results we achieved together

Our work with HMPPS Digital has reduced risk and improved processes, so code is easier to maintain and teams are well-positioned to continuously improve it in future. Furthermore, as our involvement occurred when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, we were able to build on the work we had done to improve collaboration by helping teams to transition to fully remote work.

• Increased collaboration between teams
• Surfaced psychological safety for team health
• Transitioned team to fully remote
• Improved documentation
• Codebase easier to maintain
• Reduced risk in future

Improved technology will make it easier for our people to do their jobs more efficiently. We want to provide better access to information to help staff make better decisions and improve outcomes.

HMPPS Business Strategy, November 2019

Digi­tal serv­ice delivery

We support you at every point in the delivery lifecycle, right from defining the problem right through to the live services that solve them.

National security and public safety

In the need to do more with less, organisations are turning to technology to help them fight crime, respond to emergencies and keep people safe.

Speak with an expert

The post Helping HMPPS to improve prisoner services appeared first on Made Tech.