First-of-its-kind services platform benefits North Shore residents
“In the last two years the Local Government Services division of Datacom has played an important role in assisting us in achieving our vision of transforming our business from a systems-centric approach to a citizen-centric approach. NSCC's revolutionary and award winning Online Consenting Solution for the electronic processing of building consents and the award winning Citizen Services Platform for our Web channel are examples of solutions developed by Datacom’s Local Government Services.”
Tehmus Mistry, Services Development Manager
Solution snapshot
Customer
North Shore City Council
Industry
Local government
Business situation
North Shore City Council required a new online web and portal platform to allow its citizens and customers to securely engage and interact with Council and access to a range of information and services, at a time and place of their choosing.
Solution
Technology partners Datacom and Microsoft Consulting Services developed and established an innovative award-winning web and portal platform to support North Shore City Council’s organisational strategy of transforming online customer engagement and services delivery.
Benefits
• Maximizing service delivery and efficiency gains by providing customers with safe online self-service opportunities at a time and place of their choosing
• Cost benefits achieved by reducing dependency on, and in some cases replacing some of the more expensive, traditional channels of service engagement
• Providing a flexible platform through which services that can be rapidly adapted to changing customer needs and expectations, leading to improved customer satisfaction
Case study
Transformation requires innovation
The North Shore and North Shore City is one of the greater Auckland region’s rapidly growing areas. North Shore City Council (NSCC) provides a range of local government services to residents and business on the North Shore, as well as tourists and other visitors.
As part of its commitment to excellence, NSCC has transformed its business model by moving towards a more customer centric approach to service delivery and fulfillment. To achieve this, NSCC aimed to maximise new technology opportunities to facilitate greater online electronic interaction and service delivery between citizens and customers and the organisation.
Underpinning this strategic approach has been NSCC’s commitment to leveraging online digital channels such as the Internet as the being the dominant communications and engagement channel of the future.
Key drivers have included:
• Customers are increasingly becoming more technology literate with expectations around wanting to engage electronically for services and information;
• Historically disparate and separate services are increasingly converging into a combined offering of the customers choosing;
• Customers increasingly expect to have access to technologies and tools which enable them to choose and tailor their interactions with Council in a self-service manner at a time and place of their choosing without needing to physically come into a council office.
Expertise combines to deliver results
As part of a boarder transformation programme, NSCC required a new online web and portal platform to provide its customers with a greater capability to securely engage and interact with Council, and access to a range of information and services at a time and place of their choosing.
To meet this need, Datacom’s specialist vertical local government team worked with Microsoft Consulting Services to develop and deliver the innovative Customer Services Platform (CSP) through Microsoft’s Services Ready Programme. The CSP provides Council’s stakeholders with single uniform front-end services, through which they are able to electronically interact with NSCC in a safe, secure and efficient manner.
This solution met a number of key requirements, including bi-directional interaction and transacting between North Shore City stakeholders and NSCC on 24x7 basis as well as the convergence of several online services through a single interface.
NSCC's relationship with Datacom has been a highly productive and successful one which has resulted in the completion of numerous projects over the last few years.
Key points
• The innovative and multi award winning Customer Services Platform (CSP), developed by technology partners Datacom and Microsoft Consulting Services, provides a unified, agile capability that can now be leveraged by other Councils’ and government agencies to develop and deliver services electronically on an ongoing basis. The Online Consenting Solution which lies within CSP was the first of its kind in New Zealand.
• The CSP is designed for the delivery of all online-based services via the internet. The portal has the flexibility to cater to the needs of a variety of customer segments as identified within NSCC’s extensive database.
• NSCC won five awards in the 2010 Association of Local Government Information Management’s (ALGIM) annual survey of council websites, including Best Redeveloped Website and Best New Feature Large Council Website for its innovative online consenting solution. The Online Consenting Solution was also awarded the supreme excellence in innovation award at the ALGIM annual conference. They also won the TUANZ Local and Central Government Award in 2010.
This Case Study for North Shore City Council is provided by Datacom.