Secure mobile device management for a UK local council

01 The challenge

Council frontline teams — housing officers, social care, parking enforcement, libraries — rely on fleets of Android tablets and handsets. Without central control, devices drifted: staff changed settings, installed personal apps, missed updates, and a lost device meant a potential data-protection incident.

Commercial MDM suites charge per device per month, which adds up quickly across a borough, and the IT team needed something that fitted public-sector procurement and could be supported locally rather than through a distant vendor.

02 What we did

We delivered a customised MDM platform built on the open-source Headwind MDM core, extended with our own plug-ins and packaged as an annual licence with a UK support contract:

• Kiosk launcher that restricts each device to approved council apps only
• Remote policy and configuration — Wi-Fi profiles, security settings and app deployment pushed silently to every device
• Device inventory and location, with remote lock and wipe for lost or stolen units
• Messaging / pager, photo-capture and contacts plug-ins written for the council’s field workflows
• Hosted database and admin console, plus onboarding sessions for the IT team

After a successful rollout, the same platform was licensed to a neighbouring London borough.