CityConnect: Digitizing Services for the Community

Customer research told us our community wanted greater visibility of request progress, transparency of service level agreements committed by the Council, and to be able to find and understand information easily. They wanted “simple and effortless” and mobile friendly – something we were not previously delivering. Our challenge was to replace the City of Sydney’s outdated and fragmented online tools, and deliver a simplified, connected, and omnichannel platform. This involved introducing new smart digital forms and an integrated personalised dashboard that work together to deliver an ”all in one place” digital experience for the community.

The project adopted Human-Centred Design, and Design Thinking methods in addressing the design challenge. Using the findings from the City’s customer research, the key design challenges were identified and concept solution elements were then developed in consultation with a multi-disciplinary team with cross-functional representatives from Technology, Communications, Customer Service, and Business Process Improvement. This resulted in eight digital service design concepts that were developed and presented to executive and senior management, which was then further refined to enable the City to provide services and information at the right time, right place and right context for customers.

Commercially, it enhances the City’s digital service offerings, increasing customer satisfaction and digital service uptake. It also reduced internal re-work and helped optimise internal business processes, resulting in greater efficiency in resolving requests and better adherence to service level agreements. Environmentally, it promotes paperless transactions, reducing the City’s environmental footprint. Societally, it improves accessibility and inclusivity, ensuring all residents and visitors can easily access our services. Overall, the project’s design impact transforms the City’s digital landscape, aligning with what our community had told us they expected, and enhancing the overall quality of service we provided.

A great deal of care was spent in ensuring the system integrates with our internal back-end systems including our Customer Identity and Access Management solution, Master Customer Record system, and Customer Relationship Management tool. Doing so ensured that the community would not only receive an enhanced experience through a new User Interface, but an enriched journey that leveraged the information they had already provided to us across our previously disjointed channels. At the same time, we streamlined business processes while creating the workflows for our new smart digital forms, and implemented a new Microsoft Dynamics based Customer Relationship Management system to optimise and coordinate the sequenced completion of tasks required from multiple business areas to resolve community member requests.