The Department of Health has appointed G-Cloud supplier dxw to achieve efficiency savings by upgrading its intranet.
The department says that the work is aimed at making it quicker and easier for its 2,000 staff to publish and access information, improve user satisfaction and provide significant efficiency savings.
Its intranet provides a central source of information and news for policymakers, project teams and change makers across health and care services.
Chris Fleming, intranet product manager at the Department of Health, said: “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.
“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.”
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To carry out the work, dxw will use an agile development process with a series of sprints between now and the end of March, 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.
Recently, DH migrated the site on to GovPress, dxw’s custom-built WordPress platform specifically designed for the public sector.
Harry Metcalfe, managing director of dxw, said: “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 users.”
