Public sector digital services provider dxw announced that it has won a contract to refine and enhance the intranet at the Department of Health (DH). This work will make it quicker and easier for DH’s 2,000 staff to publish and access information, improve user satisfaction and provide significant efficiency savings.
The project began with a discovery phase dxw led for the initial intranet development some two years ago. More recently, DH migrated the site on to GovPress, dxw’s custom-built WordPress platform specifically designed for the public sector.
G-Cloud provider dxw was again selected by DH due to its strong track record in agile development and the Digital by Default service standard. The firm is also experienced in running complex WordPress sites and integrating them with back end systems, demonstrated by its work for other public sector organisations including NHS England and the Health Research Authority.
The DH intranet provides a central source of information and news for policymakers, project teams and change makers across the health and care services.
“We redesigned our intranet two years ago but even though it is cheaper to run than its predecessor with higher user satisfaction, user feedback and analytic data show that there is still room for improvement. Users would like to find things more easily and content owners and editors want a more streamlined publication process,” explains Chris Fleming, intranet product manager at the Department of Health. “One of the key lessons we learned from the initial redesign was that you can never do enough engagement, so together with dxw we are regularly talking to users to understand and address their needs.”
To carry out the enhancement, dxw will use an agile development process with a series of sprints between now and the end of March 2016, incorporating user feedback at all stages of the work. The code will be published on software repository GitHub, enabling other organisations to use it to build their own intranet sites.
“No digital project can remain fit for purpose if it stands still. dxw have brought new ideas and insight to help us ensure our intranet meets the highest digital standards” concluded Fleming.
“We fully support the Government mandate that internal systems should be as efficient and user friendly as external ones,” says Harry Metcalfe, managing director of dxw. “DH found that simply saving each member of staff 30 minutes per week equates to over £1m of efficiency savings per year, so as well as making life easier for users we are helping to make the healthcare budget go further – something which will benefit all of us as taxpayers and healthcare users.”
