Over the last few weeks, a significant amount of my time has been focused on the OCA. This important work will help ensure our service is organised and equipped to:
- meet future demand
- support modern ways of working
- provide the skills needed to help deliver the Luton 2040 vision
Complaints application beta complete
A major milestone over the last two sprints has been completing the complaints application build.
We have now held the kick-off meeting with the complaints application delivery team and moved into the next phase of implementation, testing and operational readiness.
The new application will provide a more consistent and streamlined approach to complaint handling, improving:
- visibility
- reporting
- the overall experience for both residents and staff
This is an important step towards modernising our customer-facing services while reducing reliance on manual processes and disconnected systems.
Graphic showing four council officers supporting a customer through various stages of their case:
- housing (working on the tenant update)
- social care (adding assessment information)
- benefits (checking financial entitlements)
- Customer Services (speaking with the resident)
Three officers are dealing with the issues online (on laptops) and only the Customer Services representative is on the phone. In the middle of the graphic is a screenshot of the new chat capability, showing how the collaboration between various teams and updates for this case display on the new platform.
FOI and SAR applications taking shape
Work has also progressed at pace on our Freedom of Information (FOI) and Subject Access Request (SAR) applications.
Over the last two sprints we have completed the alpha of both online forms and established a shared back-office workflow. Because the two processes have several similarities, this approach helps us maximise reuse, reduce duplication and create a more consistent experience for officers managing requests.
It also means we can deliver future enhancements more quickly while maintaining consistency across both services.
Building reusable platform patterns
A key principle of our low code platform approach is to build reusable components that can support multiple services.
Over the last two sprints, James Coleman, Seniour Digital Developer, has introduced several new platform patterns, including:
- enhanced filtered list functionality within back-office interfaces, making it easier for users to see which cases require actions
- integrated PDF viewing within portal applications, allowing documents to be viewed directly without requiring downloads
- continued work towards a more accessible HTML-based document experience, ensuring we improve accessibility while providing a practical interim solution through integrated document viewing
These patterns help us develop new applications more quickly while providing a more consistent user experience across the platform.
Enabling collaboration around cases
One of the most exciting developments has been the introduction of a new chat and collaboration capability within the platform.
When multiple teams are involved in supporting a resident, conversations can quickly become spread across email chains, Teams chats, phone calls and separate systems. This makes it harder to maintain a complete record of the discussions, decisions and actions linked to a case.
To address this, we have developed a chat feature that is available in any application built on the platform, as shown in the image at the top of this post.
The feature allows authorised users to hold conversations directly against a case record, creating a single source of truth for communications and decision-making. Instead of information being scattered across multiple systems, conversations become part of the case history itself.
Crucially, this has been built as a platform capability rather than a feature for one application. That means it can be reused across future services and provides a foundation for more effective cross-team and cross-organisational collaboration. I’ve set the challenge to try to get this integrated with Microsoft Teams too.
Building our own project delivery platform
James Bovington, Service Manager and Principal Developer, has developed a new project management and delivery pipeline application for internal use.
When reviewing and trialling the tools available to us, we found that existing products either:
- lacked the flexibility we needed
- introduced additional licensing costs
- required us to adapt our processes to fit the software
Rather than purchasing another product, we chose to use our own low code platform to build a solution tailored to our needs.
The application provides a central place to manage:
- project pipelines
- delivery planning
- prioritisation
- work tracking
- resource visibility
- reporting and governance
More importantly, it gives us control over the future direction of the product. Rather than waiting for a supplier to introduce new functionality, we can rapidly develop and deploy features ourselves as our ways of working evolve.
It also demonstrates the value of the low code platform itself. By using the platform to solve our own business challenges, we are expanding our library of reusable components while proving the platform’s capability in a real operational environment.
Wrapping up
For me, the most encouraging part of the last two sprints is that we are starting to see the platform mature. Each new application is helping us build something reusable, whether that is a:
- workflow pattern
- component
- better way for teams to collaborate around a case
That means the work we are doing now should make the next projects quicker, easier and more consistent to deliver.
Like
Love
Haha
