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Government agencies carry compliance requirements, accessibility obligations, and security standards that most software vendors have never had to think about. Off-the-shelf platforms built for commercial organisations often fail in government contexts: data sovereignty requirements, audit trails, and integration with legacy systems each create problems the vendor didn't plan for.
We build custom government software for local authorities, regional agencies, and GovTech companies. Citizen portals, permits systems, case management, grant administration, and analytics platforms that meet the security, accessibility, and compliance requirements your procurement team will sign off on.
Citizen self-service portals with digital forms, online payments, and case tracking, integrated with your back-office systems
Permits and licensing management from application through inspection to approval, replacing paper workflows and manual processing queues
Case management for social services, regulatory compliance, and benefits administration, with audit trails and reporting built for public sector accountability
Government analytics dashboards, performance reporting, and open data platforms built for your reporting obligations
Recognition
Running permit applications, business licence renewals, and service requests through paper forms and email because the off-the-shelf portal didn't survive contact with your legacy back-office systems?
Case management for social services or benefits programmes scattered across disconnected tools with no consolidated view of a citizen's engagement across multiple service areas?
In short
RaftLabs builds custom government software for local authorities, state agencies, and GovTech companies. We deliver citizen self-service portals, permits and licensing systems, case management for social services and benefits, grant administration platforms, public safety software, and government analytics. We work within procurement constraints, security requirements, and accessibility obligations. Most government software projects deliver a production-ready module in 12 to 20 weeks at a fixed, agreed cost.
Companies we've built for


Citizen service requests submitted by email or paper form with no tracking or status visibility
When planning applications, permit requests, and service enquiries come in by email or paper form, the processing queue is invisible. Officers don't know what's in the queue without checking their email. Citizens don't know where their application is without calling. Statutory processing deadlines are tracked manually, or not at all. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Technology Engagement Center (2022), the U.S. federal government spends approximately $38.7 billion annually processing documents through paper-based methods, with citizens bearing an estimated $117 billion in compliance costs from 10.5 billion hours completing government forms. Every missed deadline is a formal complaint waiting to happen. A citizen portal with case tracking replaces the invisible queue with a system both officers and applicants can see in real time.
Case records for the same individual spread across multiple service areas with no joined-up view
A citizen who interacts with housing, social care, and benefits services is three separate records in three separate systems. When any one team needs the full picture of an individual's circumstances, for a safeguarding review, a joined-up support plan, or a fraud investigation, they have to request information from two other teams. That delay has a cost: decisions take longer, errors go undetected, and vulnerable people fall through gaps. A unified case record changes that without requiring all services to run on the same operational system.
Grant assessment decisions that are difficult to reconstruct for audit because they happened in email
When grant applications are assessed through email, scoring is inconsistent between assessors, the rationale for borderline decisions isn't documented, and the full evidence trail is spread across multiple inboxes. An audit or Freedom of Information request requires weeks of email archaeology to reconstruct what was decided and why. That's a compliance gap, not a process inconvenience. A structured assessment workflow records every score, every comment, and every decision in a system that produces an audit trail automatically.
Performance data requiring manual extraction and reconciliation before any report can be produced
The finance system, the case management system, and the HR system each produce reports in their own format. The performance manager spends two days every quarter extracting data, reconciling numbers across systems, and building the report in a spreadsheet. The numbers are already out of date by the time the report reaches the senior leadership team. An analytics platform that connects the source systems produces the same report from live data in minutes, not days.
Generic e-government platforms are built for simple transactions: a payment form, a basic application. When the service involves multiple steps, document upload, identity verification, conditional logic based on the applicant's circumstances, or integration with back-office case management, the generic platform breaks down and staff end up processing submissions manually.
We build citizen portals that handle the full service journey, from initial application through document verification, officer review, decision, and appeal. Citizens track their case status at every stage without calling the contact centre.
Best for
Building permits, business licence applications, planning applications, and regulatory approvals share the same fundamental process: an application is submitted, documents are checked, officers are assigned, inspections are scheduled, decisions are made, and conditions are recorded. When this process runs on paper forms and email, the processing queue is invisible, deadlines are missed, and applicants have no visibility of where they stand.
We build permits and licensing systems that make the workflow visible and trackable for both applicants and officers, with integrations to GIS, payment processors, and back-office finance systems.
Best for
Social services and benefits case management involves some of the most sensitive data a government agency handles: vulnerable individuals, household composition, financial circumstances, safeguarding records. The software needs to be not just functional but secure, auditable, and designed to support workers who carry high caseloads and can't afford data entry errors.
We build case management systems for social services, housing, benefits, and regulatory compliance, with the audit trail, the access controls, and the safeguarding workflow that public sector accountability requires.
Best for
Government grant programmes, from small community funding rounds to large capital grant schemes, involve the same core workflow: applications are received, assessed, approved, monitored for compliance, and closed with an outcome report. When this runs on email and spreadsheets, assessments are inconsistent, monitoring is manual, and the evidence trail for audit is difficult to reconstruct.
We build grant administration platforms for government bodies distributing public funds. The application portal applicants use to submit bids, and the assessment and award management tools that programme managers use to make and monitor funding decisions.
Best for
Public safety software, for police, fire, emergency management, and regulatory enforcement, has demanding requirements: high availability, offline capability for field officers, real-time data sharing across agencies, and an audit trail that will withstand scrutiny in legal proceedings. Off-the-shelf public safety platforms are expensive, slow to implement, and rarely fit the specific workflows of a local or regional agency.
We build public safety and enforcement software for agencies that need systems designed around their specific workflows and jurisdiction requirements rather than adapted from a generic platform.
Best for
Government agencies face growing expectations for performance transparency, from the central government departments that fund them, from elected members who scrutinise their performance, and from citizens who expect to understand how public money is spent. Producing performance reports manually from data held in disconnected systems is slow, resource-intensive, and produces numbers that different parts of the organisation can't agree on.
We build government analytics platforms that connect the operational systems, case management, permits, benefits, finance, and produce the performance reports that local authorities, regulators, and central government departments need.
Best for
Government projects require more detailed discovery than most. We map the current process: the paper forms, the email workflows, the legacy system integrations, the statutory obligations. We identify the data protection requirements, the accessibility obligations, and the security controls the project must meet from day one. Discovery produces a fixed-scope specification that can go through procurement without scope uncertainty.
We design the system architecture around the specific constraints of your environment: the on-premise or cloud hosting requirements, the network security controls, the integration protocols available to connect to legacy back-office systems, and the data retention and sovereignty requirements. Government systems need security and accessibility built into the architecture, not added afterwards.
Development runs in two-week sprints with working software reviewed at each checkpoint. For citizen-facing services, we build accessible interfaces from the first sprint, not audited for accessibility at the end. For back-office systems, we involve the officers who will use the system in sprint reviews so workflow issues are caught before they're embedded in production code.
Government systems often go live in parallel with the existing process: the paper form stays available while the digital channel builds volume. We support the go-live period directly and provide post-launch support covering bug fixes, edge cases that emerge from live public use, and change requests as policy requirements evolve.
Most focused builds, a citizen portal, a permits system, or a case management tool, deliver a production-ready system in 12 to 16 weeks. The full engagement, including discovery, security assurance, accessibility audit, and parallel running before full cutover, typically runs 20 to 28 weeks for a single service. Larger platform replacements covering multiple service areas run 6 to 12 months. We work in milestones, so you see working software every two weeks and can adjust scope before it's built into production.
Yes. We build accessibility in from the first sprint rather than auditing against it at the end. WCAG 2.1 AA compliance is a legal requirement for public sector websites in the UK under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations, and a practical requirement for any citizen-facing government service. Our development process includes accessibility checks at each sprint review, and we conduct or facilitate a formal accessibility audit before go-live. We can provide an accessibility statement and a VPAT for procurement requirements.
Yes. Most government projects involve at least one legacy back-office system, a financial management system, a housing system, or a planning system, that the new digital service needs to connect to. Where the legacy system has an API, we use it. Where it doesn't, we build integration using database-level connectors, file-based exchange, or a middleware layer that translates between the legacy system's data format and the new platform. We document the integration architecture during the discovery phase so there are no surprises when development starts.
A citizen portal or self-service application form with back-office integration typically runs $30,000 to $65,000. A permits and licensing management system covering application, workflow, inspection, and decision runs $50,000 to $100,000. A case management system for social services or benefits administration typically runs $60,000 to $120,000 depending on the complexity of the case workflow and reporting requirements. We scope every project before pricing it: fixed cost agreed before development starts, suitable for a public sector procurement process. We don't do hourly billing.
What clients say
Three-year average engagement. Founders and operators describing the work in their own words. No marketing varnish.

All of the sprints were completed on schedule and on budget. We highly recommend RaftLabs!
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Tell us your agency type, the service you need to digitise, and the compliance or procurement constraints we need to work within. We'll tell you what we'd build and how.