Department of Health works with G-Cloud provider dxw in intranet revamp

Dxw will use an agile development process to carry out improvements to the Department of Health intranet between now and the end of March

The Department of Health has selected G-Cloud provider dxw to revamp its intranet service, in a bid to make it easier for the department's 2,000 staff to publish and access information.

The department's intranet is a central source of information and news for policy-makers, project teams and decision-makers across the health and care services sector.

The Department of Health initially picked dxw two years ago in a discovery phase for the initial intranet development. More recently, the Department migrated the site on to GovPress, a WordPress platform that is custom-built by dxw for the public sector.

And now, the Department of Health has selected dxw again, to enhance the intranet service.

"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," said Chris Fleming, intranet product manager at the Department of Health.

"Users would like to find things more easily and content owners and editors want a more streamlined publication process," he added.

Fleming explained that one of the key lessons the Department learned from the initial redesign was that the team could "never do enough [work on] engagement".

He continued: "So together with dxw we are regularly talking to users to understand and address their needs."

To carry out the improvements, dxw said it would use an agile development process with a series of sprints between now and the end of March 2016, incorporating user feedback throughout all stages of the work. The code will then be published on software repository GitHub, enabling other organisations to use it to build their own intranet sites.

On the need to keep improving the intranet services, Fleming said: "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".