Digital Solutions for the UK

Email

queries@triplevalueimpact.com

Phone

+44 79 7440 6672

Govtech uses digital automation to reduce manual input, limit intervention and free up much need manpower

Written by Triplevalueimpact

Case Studies

February 18, 2026

NISTA’s latest Major Projects Annual Report has just rated the UK’s 189 largest government programmes, a £924.2 billion portfolio expected to deliver £603.6 billion in benefits. Of those 189, only 29, 15%, are rated green, meaning delivery confidence is high with no major issues in sight. 58% are amber. 18% are red. If you sat on the delivery side of any one of them, none of that would surprise you. What’s worth paying attention to is what moved this year, and what it says about where the fix actually lives.

The number that matters more than the snapshot

Twenty-six projects successfully exited the portfolio this year, up from 14 the year before, and 18 projects moved from amber to green. One even moved from red all the way to green. A single-year rating is a snapshot of where a programme happens to be standing. A move from amber to green is evidence that something was actually donedifferently, and eighteen instances of that in one year is not noise.

Where the improvement actually happened

Seventy per cent of this year’s exits came from Government Transformation and Service Delivery projects, the category built around digital and process change rather than physical construction. That’s notable. These are exactly the programmes where the difference between amber and green usually comes down to the unglamorous basics: clear governance, realistic planning and sequencing, and someone operationally accountable for the link between change activity and outcome. Infrastructure and Construction remains the largest category by cost at £450 billion, and Military Capability the largest by scale of ambition, but it’s the transformation programmes that show what disciplined delivery does when it’s applied properly.

Why the amber majority is the real story

58% amber is not a crisis rating, and it shouldn’t be read as one. It’s the holding pattern most complex programmes sit in for long stretches (and I speak from personal experience), dependent on decisions, funding profiles or delivery risks that haven’t yet resolved either way. The real question a 58% amber figure raises isn’t “why aren’t these programmes green,” it’s “what determines whether an amber programme moves toward green or drifts toward red.” This year’s data gives a partial answer: the programmes that moved were disproportionately the ones where delivery discipline, not just funding or ambition, was strengthened. Amber itself is not the problem; amber without a clear route to green can become a permanent condition.

 

What this means if you’re running one of these programmes

If your programme sits in the amber 58%, the lesson from this year’s movers is specific rather than general. It isn’t “get more funding” or “set a more ambitious target,” both of which were almost certainly already true. It’s the operational layer underneath: whether governance is clear enough that decisions get made at the right level, whether sequencing reflects what the delivery team can actually absorb, and whether someone owns the connection between what’s being delivered and the benefit it was meant to produce. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury put it plainly this year: building things in the UK has felt too difficult, too expensive, too complicated, too slow. The 26 exits and 18 upgrades are the evidence that this is fixable at the level of individual programmes, not just at the level of national strategy.

Where TVI fits in

This is the layer we work in every day: embedding with client teams to bring the governance, sequencing and delivery discipline that moves a programme from amber toward green, and staying close enough to the detail that “on track” means something more than a status update. If your organisation is running a digital programme that’sbeen sitting in amber longer than it should, that’s a conversation worth having now, while there’s still time to change the trajectory.

Get in touch with Triple Value Impact to talk about what it would take to move your programme toward green.

Achieving a balanced budget is a challenge that councils face every year but, with continuing pressures, this has become even more challenging. Demand for services is rising, whilst expectations for how services will be delivered, particularly to vulnerable citizens, have grown. With resources stretched thinner, timely support decisions and rapid processing of changes is vital to aid sustainable collection plans.

Four years ago, Wakefield needed to reduce its operating costs and improve service delivery, whilst freeing up staff to focus on debt recovery. Wakefield chose Govtech to help deliver these objectives and the subsequent digital transformation in Revenues & Benefits is still paying dividends.

Solution
Digital transformation to enable a 24/7 mobile friendly service, where customers could transact with the council in their own time and through their channel of choice would, through reducing unnecessary contact and automating processing, release team resources to focus on more pressing priorities.

“We wanted to reduce the amount of time spent on manual data input and records checking in Revenues and Benefits, so we drafted a business case to look at the impact of online self-service with automation. We looked at various suppliers and, whilst other products appeared cheaper on paper, only Govtech’s webCAPTURE and eCAPTURE services could show a proven reservoir of customer automation data and outcomes that would underpin our business case.”

Anthony Derbyshire, Business Development Manager

Results
Having created the case for change based on outcomes, Wakefield’s team have diligently measured these. In Benefits, the return was immediate. eCAPTURE fully integrated the council’s existing online form with the Benefits system, eliminating manual data entry and clerical checking on 12,000 forms. This saved 3,000 – 4,000 hours per annum.

With webCAPTURE, Council Tax customers were able to report changes of address, apply for a sole occupier person discount or create a Repayment Arrangement online and landlords could report tenancy changes. With transactions being automatically checked and then processed in the Revenues system, Wakefield measured first year ‘cashable savings’ of £130,000. Savings rose in Year 2 and thereafter, as more customers chose to serve themselves online, further reducing telephone contact and footfall.

But the biggest gains were realised by re-assigning resources freed up by automation into Council Tax collection.

“When we went live in October with webCAPTURE, our in-year collection rate at that point was 0.25% down on the previous year. However, by March, our in-year collection rate was 0.25% UP on the previous year. The 0.5% shift in the first 6 months of live running was worth £750,000.”

Anthony Derbyshire, Business Development Manager

Highlights

  • £130,000 cashable savings within the first year
  • £750K aged debt recovered
  • 40% of data entry for benefit forms elimindated
  • 4000 staff hours saved per annum
  • 0.5% shift up on in-year recovery
  • 24/7 mobile-friendly citizen service

Making IT implementation simple
When asked what Govtech were like to deal with during the implementation, Anthony’s answer is simple: “As a project that involved a third-party provider, it was the easiest implementation I’ve been involved with in over 20 years of local government project management. Govtech’s senior practitioners are former local government officers and communication was excellent throughout implementation. Everything went exactly as planned. There were no surprises. And it did exactly what it said on the tin.”

Building on success
The automation provided by webCAPTURE was a cornerstone in the subsequent internal transformation of the Revenues & Benefits service. Former silos and lines of demarcation have been broken down and staff have been re-trained and cross-skilled to enable a much more flexible and responsive service. This has proved invaluable during the Covid-19 crisis.

“Our successful partnership with Govtech has enabled the Service to respond positively to our challenges whilst improving the level of service we provide to our citizens.”

Melissa Mallaby, Service Manager

You May Also Like...

3C ICT Shared Service Review

3C ICT Shared Service Review

Feb 18, 2026

Cambridge City Council (CCC), Huntingdonshire District Council (HDC), and South Cambridgeshire District Council...