ANS & Manchester City Council: Driving Digital Enablement in Public Services

Watch the video: Manchester City Council & ANS: Customer Success Story

Background

Manchester City Council, a flagship customer of ANS, has long been a pioneer in embracing digital transformation. The partnership between ANS and Manchester City Council began with foundational work in Azure Cloud Services and ANS’s UK Data Centres.

As the council’s ambitions grew, so did our collaboration, evolving into a strategic alliance focused on modernising public services and delivering greater value to citizens.

“It’s been a long-term relationship with Manchester City Council and ANS, plus the relationships that ANS has with the likes of Microsoft, which has become an even more strategic partner for ourselves”.

Jon Burt – Head of Enterprise Architecture, Manchester City Council

The Challenge

Manchester City Council faced challenges that are all too familiar to large public sector organisations. Outdated business processes created inefficiencies and unnecessary overspending, while siloed legacy systems limited the ability to innovate and respond quickly to changing needs.

At the same time, there was a growing urgency to modernise the council’s technology infrastructure to deliver better outcomes for citizens and push digital enablement. To achieve this, they required a partner who could help reimagine service delivery through smarter, more scalable solutions.

The Solution

The start of Manchester City Council’s journey began years ago when they adopted computing power from ANS’s data centres. This laid the groundwork for a broader digital transformation, including the adoption of public cloud services and Azure capabilities.

From here, the council had a secure Azure landing zone to build apps out from.

More recently, the council has been working closely with the ANS Centre of Excellence—a managed service that provides continuous access to ANS’s top-tier expertise. This has helped them to pursue iterative digital transformation, focusing on Low Code Platforms and emerging technologies like Generative AI.

Key initiatives include the rapid development and deployment of applications through low-code platforms, which are helping to replace outdated manual processes with more efficient digital solutions.

The council is also exploring AI functions to reduce workload and enhance the delivery of public services. In parallel, efforts are underway to modernise the council’s data infrastructure, laying a strong foundation for improved analytics and more informed decision-making in the future.

Outcomes

One notable success is the implementation of AI-powered pothole classification. This is where citizens can report potholes by simply taking a photo, and AI helps assess the severity, minimising the need for manual triage. Similar AI-integrated applications are being explored to address housing issues such as damp and mould.

In adult social care, a new low-code platform is going to transform the “Discharge to Assess” (D2A) process, replacing spreadsheet-based workflows with an integrated system that automatically routes patients to appropriate care services using hospital data.

With ANS’s ongoing support, the council is shifting from reactive service delivery to a more proactive, outcome-driven approach for their citizens.

“It’s flipped it from thinking about the technology, to really thinking about the use cases and the outcomes that we’re trying to achieve.”

Jon Burt – Head of Enterprise Architecture, Manchester City Council