Transitioning from Web Content to Digital Service
Read about how we helped the City of Waterloo develop a Digital Services Strategy and kickstart a shift from web content focus to digital service focus.
The communications team at the City of Waterloo realized that the city website had become a service channel rather than a content service. They engaged Perry Group to help build upon this and develop a Digital Services Strategy that would provide the framework for delivering municipal services for the digital age.
With a joint project team from Corporate Communications and Information Management Technology Services (IMTS), and working with the City’s Senior Management Team we reviewed the current state of digital service delivery at the city and developed a strategy for a three-stage approach to becoming a digital organization, from Exploring Digital to Designing Digital to Being Digital.
The roadmap for Exploring and Designing Digital included the development of a vision, digital standards and a digital education program, alongside experiments in digital service design and business process optimization. A collaborative partnership between Corporate Communications and IMTS was established to manage the new Digital and Technology governance framework, with new digital resources and participation from senior leadership and key stakeholders.
The strategy was adopted by leadership and work has already begun on a number of the strategic recommendations.
Digital Services - Content Design / Re-design
Learn about how we helped a municipality improve their web content to be more user centred and action oriented, while providing training and support around ongoing web content operations - to ensure that it is data driven.
While lots of our strategy work focuses heavily on digital services - offering users the ability to pay, book, apply and request online - web content remains an important aspect of digital service.
“Give information” is an important digital service pattern - that municipalities need to get better at. The more we can have users self-serve on the web, the more they don’t have to contact the municipality to ask simple, easily answered questions - freeing up staff time for the more involved and complex questions.
So, we have built a new capability within our team to help municipalities with content design and content operations - in support of their digital objectives.
Redesigned Thunder Bay web content to support the launch of Digital Planning and Permitting
We recently worked with the City of Thunder Bay as they launched their new planning and permitting digital services to redesign their content, using user research and google analytics data to inform the redesign.
We helped redesign navigation and menus, worked with teams to rewrite content and collated metadata to improve fundability and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
The new approach is more action oriented, less department and team oriented, and puts the information that users need at their fingertips. We’ve also equipped the team with the training, playbooks and tools (wireframes, Google Analytics report) that allow them to actively manage content operations in a more data-centric manner going forward.
Service Transformation Strategy - Waterloo Region
Learn how we worked with a large Regional municipality to help them think through their approach to digital transformation, positioning the work ahead as central to their ability to scale to their growing community while delivering effective and modern services.
Facing numerous pressures, the Region of Waterloo was looking for help to understand how Digital could be used to drive transformation throughout its organization - and to build out a strategy to achieve that.
We worked under tight timelines, with a core project team led by the Region’s Strategic Initiatives, Customer Service, HR and IT leaders and with their Corporate Leadership to shift the focus from Digital to Service Transformation.
We helped to build a strong consensus and a strategy around a multi-track approach to incubating and evolving customer centred digital approaches through a series of lighthouse investments and initiatives.
The resultant strategy was supported by leadership, adopted by Council and work is actively underway on realizing many of the recommendations.
Thunder Bay - Digital Academy
Read about the digital learning that we are providing to municipal leaders in Thunder Bay.
Perry Group has developed a four module course designed to provide municipal leaders with awareness and knowledge about digital, what it is and what it means for municipal service delivery, as well as practical information and techniques that can be used to move to a more digital model of delivery.
Leaders with extensive municipal leadership experience from our team, including Susan Chase, Dana Clarke, Alrick Grange and Nasir Kenea delivered a series of engaging sessions with 14 Thunder Bay leaders - who found the course interesting and engaging.
The City has commissioned Perry Group to run the course 3 more times in 2023 to cover all leaders across the organization.
Thunder Bay Digital Strategy
Read our case study on our work to help Thunder Bay develop a Digital Strategy
A City of Thunder Bay program and service review in 2019 identified the importance of technology to the effectiveness of a municipality. The city was not taking full advantage of technology to deliver its services and this necessitated creating a corporate digital strategy.
Perry Group worked with the City to develop its first Corporate Digital Strategy.
Read more about our work on the Thunder Bay Digital Strategy.
Cambridge - IT Finance and Service Delivery Review
How we helped Cambridge review its IT financial management processes and re-think services from a digital-first lens.
As part of this AAF project we conducted a comprehensive review of Cambridge's IT financial management practices, including a close examination and analysis of budget management, cost management, benefits management and realization processes and practices. The review benchmarked the City's technology investments against peers, carried out a deep dive analysis of expenditure trends, and identified opportunities for savings and reallocation.
The second workstream of the project worked with service owners around re-imagining ten City services (including parking, special events, building and planning inquiries, development approvals and newcomer services) as fully digital-first services - identifying the people, process and technology changes required to realize digital service delivery.
Halton Region - Digital Strategy
How we developed a bold, digital-first plan for the Region of Halton.
During 2020 / 2021 we worked closely with the Region’s Management Committee and leaders of their Strategic Transformation Group to imagine how the Region would become a Digital First organization. By embracing a modernization agenda, product management, service design, and focusing on developing a new mode of collaborating through a revamped governance model - the Region began to learn how a digital approach was possible.
We worked with the Region to develop their targets for the strategy - 125 customer facing and 50 internal services moved to self-service, digitally enabled services by 2025 - and to lay out the initiatives that would help them get there.
We modelled the approach, by working with the Region on re-thinking and redesigning 10 services (including waste and water management services) to be digital first, digital native services - identifying over $1,500,000 in potential savings by doing so.
Orillia - ECM Review and Business Process Optimization
How we helped Orillia review 28 business processes to determine high priority opportunities for process improvement, set out technology priorities and a roadmap for implementation. Also, how we helped them figure out whether they could use Office 365 for their document and records management needs.
PROJECT: ECM REVIEW AND BUSINESS PROCESS OPTIMIZATION
DESCRIPTION
Funded by the Province's Municipal Modernization program, the City of Orillia's project had two goals a) Review and determine whether Office 365 could meet their needs for a corporate Enterprise Content Management system replacement, and b) to conduct a BPO review of 25 business processes.
OUTCOME
On the ECM portion of the project we worked with the City's IT and Records Management staff and representatives from all business units to review records management practices and develop a set of business requirements. We assessed Office 365 against the requirements and confirmed that the vast majority of required features could be met, out of the box. The recommendation was to implement Office 365, without add-ons to replace their current ECM product.
The BPO portion of the project conducted as-is and to-be business process design against 28 services and processes, including Utility Locate Requests, Building Permits, Road Occupancy Permits, Complaints and Service Requests, and Tax Certificate Request Management.
The review identified over $900,000 of potential savings, significant customer service improvements and the elimination of waste.
Importantly, we identified the technology and people required to support the implementation of the process improvements, and a roadmap to follow for implementation.
PROJECT DATA
Population: 30,000
IT Team: 5
Budget: 150K
Timeline: 9 months
Georgian Bay: Online Services Review
How we helped Georgian Bay prioritize online services and develop a plan to implement their top 10 priorities.
PROJECT: ONLINE SERVICES REVIEW
DESCRIPTION
Georgian Bay is a small community of 2,500 in cottage country that swells to 18,000 over the summer. The Township wanted to identify which services it should move online, and how it should be achieved.
OUTCOME
We worked with the Townships team to identify a long list of 44 candidate services. Using a set of criteria, including transaction volume, suitability to online, customer impact and staff time saving potential we worked with staff and SMT to reduce the candidates, first to 22 and then to a top 10 list.
We worked next to identify the technology required to deliver the top 10, and then conducted a fit-gap analysis to determine what technology could be re-used and where there were gaps.
The recommendations provided short- and long-term actions. These actions would see the Township rapidly implementing new online services using some simple online forms and payments technologies, while addressing more strategic long-term actions - such as the replacement of their ERP.
PROJECT DATA
Population: 2,500 (up to 18,000 in summer)
Budget: $25k
IT Staff: 0
Timeline: 3 months
2020
Halton Hills - Website RFP
How we worked with the Town of Halton Hills to run an RFP and select a vendor-partner for the implementation of a new website and online services.
PROJECT: WEBSITE RFP
DESCRIPTION
We worked with the Town of Halton Hills to develop a Corporate IT Strategy. One of the key projects identified was a need to replace the Town's website, while introducing a range of new online services. Town leadership saw the importance of the project, but didn't have the resources available to get the project moving in the short-term.
OUTCOME
We worked with internal stakeholders to prepare business requirements and build an RFP document for the new website and online services. We worked with the Town's purchasing team to facilitate the running of the RFP, to review responses, shortlist and conduct interviews - with key stakeholders involved throughout. Once a selection was made, we handed over the Town's project team and selected vendor to implement.
PROJECT DATA
Timeline: 3 months
Budget: 20k
City of Vaughan: Digital Strategy
How we helped the City of Vaughan develop a progressive and leading Digital Strategy.
PROJECT: DIGITAL STRATEGY
Building executive engagement, support and funding for an ambitious digital strategy
DESCRIPTION
Having previously worked successfully with the City on its IT Strategy in 2014, and based on our extensive experience in eGovernance and Digital planning we were invited to assist in the development of the City’s Digital Strategy in 2017. We worked closely with the Office of the CIO and with the Senior Management Team to co-develop a digital strategy with extensive input from across the organization, and from vendors and partners. The strategy focused on 4 central pillars, tie-ing together a range of diverse strategies, including the IT, GIS and data management strategies. The digital strategy has become the overarching strategy that is guiding all technology initiatives across the organization.
OUTCOME
Exceptional level of engagement, support and commitment from the City’s Senior Management Team and the City Manager’s Office to digital initiatives, resulting in investments in Digital in the 2018 budget.
The Digital Strategy 2.0 is available at the City of Vaughan’s website - http://www.vaughan.ca/cityhall/departments/ocio/Pages/Digital-Strategy.aspx
PROJECT DATA
Pop: 300,000
IT Department: 40
Project: Digital Strategy
Budget: $40k
Timeline: 9 Months (City’s Timeline)
2017