Why does it matter?
During the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, large numbers of key workers, up to 40% of staff in some organisations, were self-isolating with covid-like symptoms. This threatened the effectiveness of some key front-line organisations.
How did we improve it?
Within just 8 days we’d led a team to deliver the end-to-end service on gov.uk enabling citizens to request tests which were dispatched from a distribution centre overnight. In the first 12 weeks our service had distributed over 1 million test kits to UK citizens
Who does it matter to?
Getting PCR tests to key workers who were self-isolating allowed those who tested negative for Covid-19 to return to work earlier.
Why was this radical?
Building a critical national service that also interfaces to a physical supply network and that scales to handle the demands of being the lead story across the entire UK media is not something that can usually be accomplished within a small number of days in a complex central government department.