London Borough of Redbridge partners with Civica to develop Track and Trace system to safeguard citizens

The flexible, automated solution was developed within one week to help reduce number of infections and ensure citizen safety

The London Borough of Redbridge has partnered with Civica, a global leader in software for public services, to develop a local track and trace solution to support in the fight against COVID-19.

The London council, which serves more than 305,000 citizens understood the need to move quickly after the UK found itself in the middle of a second wave of the pandemic. The flexible solution was developed by Civica within just seven days. Built as an extension to Civica’s iCasework cloud platform which is already being used by the Council, the lower-code, fully mobile native solution allows council employees to effectively contact anyone any local resident who may have come into contact with someone with the virus.

The platform uses datasets from Public Health England to proactively track residents who may be at risk, based on their contact with people who have recently tested positive.

A defined and limited number of employees with secure access to the data can contact anyone at risk of infection to ensure their safety and provide wellbeing and access to medical services to support the individuals involved, where required. These residents are contacted first via phone and based on automated business rules in the system, cases are escalated so that home visits can be made when contact via the phone has not been possible. Once contact has been made, the application features a countdown for those residents self-isolating and SMS messages are sent to thank people for continuing to self-isolate, to reinforce positive behaviour within the community. Record of all contacts made are secured safely within the cloud-based platform, adhering to GDPR compliance.

Emeran Saigol, Operational Director, Digital and Customer Experience at London Borough of Redbridge explained:

The safety of our community during this ongoing unprecedented pandemic must always come first. As we continue to experience a second wave of the virus, making sure that our community has access to the information they need to protect themselves and their families is of huge importance. We knew we needed a solution that was not only secure, but flexible and intuitive to allow us to scale as required.

“Civica was the perfect partner for this project. We already use its iCasework cloud software to capture and centralise information, so building on this existing solution made sense. The speed of delivery was absolutely remarkable. Due to our successful experience of working with Civica to-date, we’re confident that we have developed an effective, intuitive and secure platform to support our employees and our community during a difficult time.”

Steve Thorn, Executive Director, Civica commented:

We’re proud of what we achieved for Redbridge. Working collaboratively with project leader Sabiha Ozbay and the team at the Council, we built a flexible platform that can adapt quickly as the situation evolves The secure solution is simple to use, automated and with rich reporting capabilities to allow the Council to accurately track all individuals at risk and ultimately, help save lives.