Cutting down on duplication with digital solutions for citizens
For councils, the change brought by the current COVID-19 crisis means that they are looking for the ‘new normal’ approach when it comes to changes needed for post-virus citizen engagement. As digital transformation has now rapidly been applied to functions within local government where previously it was deemed impossible, they too must shift focus to other areas that would benefit greatly from an improved digital solution.
Every day councils receive many reports from concerned citizens about issues in their local vicinity. From vandalised property to potholes, these helpful reports paint a clear portrait to the council on the work that needs to be done in the area and, in return, the council can offer the citizen information on when it will be resolved.
This can however become troublesome when several reports of the same issue are filed at once. Not only does this mean that more than one citizen has spent time filling out a form on the council website, but every report on the same matter has to be assessed by a member of staff.
This duplication of data entry and multiple reviews is time consuming for everyone involved, and although online forms have made it easier to report issues than previous paper-based practices, there are still ways to improve the service through the digital transformation of council websites.
Imagine if everyone had a single view of each issue. If, through geolocation tools, they could look up a specific pothole, for example, and see that not only had it already been reported, but that work was scheduled to get it fixed. This would only require one point of data entry and enable citizens to view issues that the council already has view of and receive a real-time status; thereby preventing duplicate reports being submitted on the same thing.
For a council to adopt a solution that can provide this view to citizens, they must first apply a platform-based, council-wide approach that can capture geolocation-based information, and create processes and cases.
For example, with the citizen engagement platform OneVu, you are able to build online forms featuring a map within them, then set this to automatically create a trackable case, which contains the location of the issue, in real-time. This automatically populates into a new ‘Issues’ area of the system allowing citizens to see things already reported or being worked on. With its latest upgrade, non-technical users can be responsible for the creation of an entirely digital mechanism to report, track and monitor location-based issues.
So, as an example, by just giving the platform the defect code for ‘pothole’, you can instantly see every pothole held in the system along with a huge amount of underlying detail about it, such as its job and inspection status.
It’s simple solutions like these that are the main enablers for digital transformation.
When one looks across any industry, the journey to deliver effective digital transformation has required organisations to implement new capabilities in stages and use these as building blocks on that journey. Transformation doesn’t happen overnight and is never ‘done once and done no more’. As new technologies emerge, they can exploit the building blocks already in place.
By its nature, the transformation of council services will need to spread across multiple services and departments before it can become all-encompassing. No organisation can be ‘a little bit transformed’.
Many councils have turned to their citizen engagement platforms to provide the development toolkit and architectural platform to support their service transformation journey and deliver ‘quick wins’ along the way, providing councils with an extendable solution to deliver digital service transformation. However, not every solution delivers.
Whilst no system is unique in taking a platform-based approach to showing known issues such as potholes, you will find that only a select few have all the different council-wide functions listed. In a way that is designed to make councils more digitally self sufficient, be proactive in avoiding unnecessary contact and solve customer queries in the cheapest and readily available channel…digital.
This powerful functionality is made possible without any technical knowledge being required by users and delivers exceptional customer experience for your citizens. Something which is especially needed now in these changing times.
