Do you work with the public sector?

We do. We’ve built a prototype planning tool for a UK defence body, and the platform behind a safeguarding charity’s most sensitive data. Public bodies can commission us through Lot 1, Digital Outcomes, of Digital Outcomes and Specialists 7 (RM1043.9), the Government Commercial Agency framework.

A framework place gets a supplier through the door. It says nothing about whether they’ll deliver, so judge us on the work.

The work

Defence planning. A UK defence body asked us to build a prototype planning tool to support deployment planning. It’s covered by a non-disclosure agreement, so that’s as much as we can say. It’s typical of what we’re asked to do: something useful, quickly, within strict security requirements.

Safeguarding at scale. Young people have shared 52,794 testimonies of abuse through Everyone’s Invited. Each one is published without exposing who wrote it. The AI system we built strips names, dates and locations from every submission before review. It has saved around 12,500 hours of manual work.

Care at home. The Home Help Company supports older people to stay independent at home. We digitised its scheduling and automated billing and payroll. Its CEO now spends 30 fewer hours a month on payroll and invoicing.

How we work with public bodies

Public sector technology has to work properly, for everyone, on the first day. We plan around that rather than discovering it late.

• In short stages. We take a service from discovery through alpha and beta to live, with working software at the end of each stage.
• Alongside your team. We work in the open, so your people see progress as it happens, not at a big reveal.
• Accessible as standard. Everything we build meets WCAG 2.2 AA. Will my site be fast, accessible and found on Google? explains what that covers.
• Secure by design. Data stays in the environment it belongs in. Tools work offline where they need to. Old systems connect through governed routes.
• Yours at the end. You own what we build, with the infrastructure to run it.

Contic holds Cyber Essentials Plus and is registered with the ICO. We manage our compliance in Secureframe, aligned to SOC 2 and ISO 27001. How we handle sensitive data around AI is covered in is our data safe if you use AI?

Proving an idea before you scale it

Public bodies rarely get to move fast, and for good reason. The data is sensitive, the systems are old and a failed programme is expensive.

So we often start small. We put a working prototype in front of the people who’ll use it as early as possible. The decision to scale is then based on something that works, rather than a slide. You come away with a tested prototype, a clear view of what scaling would take, and a route to buy it.

Who we build for

The route is open to central government, local authorities, the NHS, schools, charities and the blue-light services. What they share is a need for services that work for the people who use them, often under tight budgets and close scrutiny.

We’ll tell you what we think, including when a smaller piece of work would serve you better than a big one. That’s easier to hear before a contract than after it.

How to buy from us

Buyers publish their requirement on the Contract Award Service, under that lot, and invite suppliers to bid through further competition. Our buying guide sets out the route step by step.

We’re happy to talk a requirement through before it goes out. That way, what goes to competition is something that can actually be built. Our public sector page has more on how we work with government teams.