5 Reasons Local Governments need an integrated digital platform

Modern organisations need to be looking beyond stand-alone websites, ERPs and CRMs. By investing in a digital platform you can connect best of breed solutions, develop game changing digital experiences, and optimise service delivery.

1. A Single Digital Experience

For local governments, a single digital experience simplifies interactions for citizens by consolidating multiple services into one accessible platform, with one digital interface. This unified approach can be a game changer when you consider that councils often deliver over 100 services that use dozens of systems. At a minimum a single digital experience, ensures that users can find information and services easily, immediately leading to increased satisfaction and engagement. It also means if they only need one password to access council services!

2. Streamlined Services and Processes

Integrating a digital front-end directly into core systems leads to faster response times to citizen requests and more efficient use of resources. Local governments benefit from streamlined services and end-to-end processing by reducing bureaucratic overhead and gaining internal efficiencies, freeing staff up to focus on value-adding tasks. The Community benefit by:

• Getting access to more services 24/7
• Getting services delivered faster and more efficiently
• Having one user interface to navigate making it intuitive and easy to find services and making it easier to track when services will be delivered

3. Business Insights

Integrated digital platforms enable local governments to collect and analyse data across various departments, providing valuable insights into community needs and service efficiencies. These insights can guide strategy and policy decisions and resource allocation to better serve the public. Most councils have no single source of truth for their data, meaning they cannot get maximum value from their data and are often flying blind when making decisions. Having a single source of truth for your data allows you to effectively analyse your data (including with AI), ensuring your data helps you to make better business decisions.

4. Flexibility and Scalability

For local governments, an integrated digital platform provides the flexibility to adapt services to meet changing community demands and the scalability to accommodate growth without significant additional investments. This adaptability enables:

• The adoption of a best of breed technology approach where councils can plug and play modern systems into the platform only as they are required.
• Services to be scaled up and down depending on demand. Add additional service delivery capacity due to urban expansion or changes in population dynamics at minimal cost (important while also operating in a rate capping environment).

5. Robust Security

Robust security is essential for local governments to protect sensitive citizen data and ensure trust in digital platforms. An integrated approach to security reduces vulnerabilities and enhances data integrity. Hosting your platform on a leading cloud solution provider like Amazon Web Services, transfers the burden of security work to expert partners allowing the Council CIO to sleep easier at night, and also frees IT staff up to spend time on delivering value added IT services for council and the community.