In this episode, we dive into City of Unley’s relaunched website, use of analytics for data-driven decision making, and the need to focus on people centered design with any digital transformation.
In a prior episode, I spoke with Clark County, Nevada about their digital transformation underway. Clark County is home to over 2 million people, so it may be easy for smaller local governments to dismiss their efforts, assuming ample resources and staff have enabled them to be successful.
We now aim to bring hope to the small to medium-sized cities, councils, and towns who have overcome resource constraints to deliver superior digital services to the communities they serve.
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with the City of Unley in South Australia to talk about their “do more with less” approach. We’ll chat about their work to deliver a new website in addition to other results-packed digital initiatives.
More info:
Featured government: City of Unley, South Australia
Episode guests:
Stephen Yates, Spatial and Business Intelligence Analyst
Alex Keay, Digital Transformation Lead
Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.
Lindsay: (00:05)
Welcome to the Govlaunch podcast. Govlaunch is the wiki for local government innovation and on this podcast, we're sharing the stories of local government innovators and their efforts to build smarter governments. I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, co-founder of Govlaunch and your host.
Lindsay: (00:23)
In a prior episode, I spoke with Clark County, Nevada about their digital transformation underway. Clark County is home to over 2 million people. So it may be easy for smaller local governments to dismiss their efforts assuming ample resources and staff has enabled them to be successful. We now aim to bring hope to the small to medium-sized cities, councils, and towns who've overcome resource constraints to deliver superior digital services to the communities they serve today. I have the pleasure of speaking with the City of Unley, Australia to talk about their “do more with less” approach. We'll chat about their work to deliver a new website in addition to other results-packed initiatives. So let's hear more about Unley’s focus on digital services and people-centered design.
Thank you both for joining me today. Can you each introduce yourselves and share a bit about your role?
Stephen: (01:18)
Hi my name's Steve Yates. I'm the Spatial and Business intelligence Analyst for the City of Unley. Um, I'm essentially the council's a data guy or data person. Um, so anything data related I tend to delve into. So in that role, um, I develop and maintain spatial and business intelligence tools. My background is in GIS and spatial, but it's kind of molded into the BI space as well and focusing on solutions and a bit of integration along the way as well. So yeah, that's, that's my role
Alex: (01:50)
And hello, I'm Alex Keay. I'm the Digital Transformation Lead with the City of Unley. Um, my roles since starting is to work in the development and delivery of a digital strategy. Um, and since then I've been involved in the development of our external facing website and currently we're building a new intranet.
Lindsay: (02:11)
Great. Well, I'm so excited to have you both on the podcast today. Digital transformation is a very hot topic in local government. Uh, as you know, especially as we continue to face this pandemic and many are scrambling to move, uh, previously paper-based services online. Your city was fortunate to be ahead of the curve on your journey toward more digital and inclusive government. Can you tell us about this evolution? When did you begin looking toward more digital services and what is your work entailed thus far?
Alex: (02:42)
Um, I can speak to this one as the digital transformation lead, I guess. Um, I work with the business systems and solutions team as does Steve. Um, and we, um, have leadership [inaudible] and James Roberts who developed a digital strategy with me back. Um, a couple of years ago, probably two and a half years ago. Uh, in that strategy, it was our starting point and the way Nicole put it, she said that really, um, we've got our community goals. The things that we're working on together to deliver, um, services and community programs in the city of Unley and where the technology comes in is it helps us to reach those community goals faster and more efficiently. So it's, it's not talking about digital as the lead of the conversation, it's using digital as an enabler to that. So I think our starting point for transformation, the conversations we're having around it with the strategy where to focus on three guiding principles, which we outlined as streamlining our service delivery around our customers and having conversations about the importance of a customer lens on everything we do and empowering our workforce in that conversation.
So that we're onboarding our staff with technology, helping them to have empathy from a customer perspective, because often it means putting a different mindset on when you're designing what you do around someone else and then embracing smart technology wherever possible. So the technology was a huge part of that conversation, but we try to position our strategy around people, the people we're designing for and the people that we were partnering with to do things in that way.
Lindsay: (04:30)
Yeah. And I want to get to the people centered design piece. But first, what strategies have you used to engage with your community to determine the areas of focus for the digital transformation team? You know, obviously there's a bunch of different areas that you can move more digital. Um, where did you decide to start?
Alex: (04:48)
Well, I guess for me, from my personal experience, um, a good case study for that would be the website. I think a lot of people as we know, uh, transacting without all tiers of government online. And so for us, we did a lot of research, um, in the transition of our new website from its previous version, which was more designed around, um, customer comes to one, which was more designed around service delivery. So in doing that research, which was quite deep, we did a lot of desktop research in the lead up. And we also held workshops with our staff and really listened to our frontline workers in our customer experience team. Um, all of our depo staff, the people that interact one-on-one with people and the aim of doing that was to determine we've got our approach was to start with our top tasks, especially in a website format, the majority of the people that come to your website, most commonly looking for key key things that they're trying to achieve when they're there.
Alex: (05:50)
What we ended up doing was, um, all of this research was combined to create some top tasks, which we could then prioritize on the website, um, both in terms of where they sat in the menu so people could discover them very easily. And also in terms of how we strategically rolled out online services on the website, so had transitioned, um, you know, paper-based forms to online forms is obviously a big, big part of that, but also redesigning service delivery around that forms transformation one by one, looking at the most common things that people need. The other thing I would add is that in the development of those top tasks in our website menu, we did a lot of customer surveys online. It's very important to look, um, customer lens and some in-person card sortings. It was about a year ago that we were doing this and we had people from different demographics coming in to look at the assumptions we'd made about the things they were looking for and what they would call them and ask them where they would position them and designed the architecture and menu structure of our website around customer feedback.
Lindsay: (07:01)
Great. I want to talk about how human centered design or people centered design has really influenced your digital transformation efforts citywide. Do you have an example or two that you could share of, um, of something that you've implemented that really highlights, uh, how focused you all have been on human centered design?
Alex: (07:21)
Yeah, look, I think for me the concept of human centered design really is, is sort of a two-fold thing. And I might mention previously, just then about the, um, the pillars of our digital strategy, two of those are about streamlining service delivery around the customer and empowering our workforce. So what the people centered design framework really has done is two things. One it's an agile project delivery framework, and the principles of which, which many people would know is to deliver things iteratively. So to put stuff out as, you know, minimal viable product, and then iterate it after getting customer feedback. The framework itself teaches people to collaborate in ways and test things, and then changed, um, changed their design, um, decision. So it helps with that. It also helps, you know, before you start the process, the framework gets everyone in the room to really determine what problems you're trying to solve and gets everyone on the same page.
Alex: (08:19)
And you learn how to best engage with each other and the communities that you're designing for. So that side it's sort of project managers, but on the other side, it's, it's empowering our workforce. So we've based one of our pillars to support staff through change. And I think that people design human centered design, what that does is it helps you to sit with the people that manage the services that you are redesigning so that they get a good customer perspective. Um, and you're nurturing them through the change because often when you step through their processes, if they've become a bit clunky over time, you're actually working with people to streamline that, which involves change. So I think having that conversation is helpful. Um, I mean the best example I can speak to is the, um, the website again, obviously because we had great staff support for that. They all understood, um, you know, the, the principles behind that. And we're very, very collaborative. I think Steve, maybe are there any examples you'd like to talk to about more specific services that we've transformed?
Stephen: (09:21)
Yeah, some of our services that we've transitioned onto the new website that have been part of that whole design ethos, um one one one example would be moving out development applications online, uh, which is where people can come in and have a look, um, and track the DA as we call it, um, for their property. It could be for a garage or a house or something that they have to go through a council for approval. Um, went through a process of, um, putting that online, using some of the tools that we have to build that integration. And, yeah, it's provided a really easy end point. I mean, it was a bit of work from the backend, but, um, for the customer, they don't have to jump out to different systems or different looking websites or anything. It's all part of that same, um, website that we use, uh, which is really good.
Lindsay: (10:12)
Great. Well I know from the citizen experience, often they don't understand the vast number of companies that are vendors that local governments are engaged with to deliver all of these services. And it can feel very incongruent and choppy to get anything accomplished with your local government. Any work to try to improve that user experience from the design perspective, and then in terms of just the tools available, I think is, is really powerful. Your website relaunch is relatively new, but you have some other digital services that have been released for a bit now, uh, with some really good analytics to show their effectiveness. Can you share perhaps one or two of these projects and the material benefits you've seen since deployment?
Stephen: (10:54)
Yeah, I can talk to that. Um, so we had a project to take out parking expiations, uh, online. We had a previous, um, process, which was very paper-based very manual driven. Um, and from end to end, we, we took that digital using these same, um, kind of send design and, um, process to look at, look at the experience first before using the technology. Obviously the technology played a big, big role, but, you know, taking this very paper-based process heavy, um, expiation project, um, we placed everything online. We streamlined all the reporting from it. We can, you know, garner user analytics quite easily. Um, basically the process would be members of the public can come and pay their expiation or review their photos online without having to go through a long, uh, litigated sort of process of, Hey, can I please see my photo, or, um, why was I parked here incorrectly or et cetera, et cetera, this just streamline that whole process, um, and gave us increased efficiencies, um, and people could pay their fine, um, or the expiation online immediately because they could see the photo and sometimes they would see it and go, yep. I was parked incorrectly and that kind of end to end, instead of them opening up a customer request to us with a phone call, then running through a huge review process that could take weeks. In many cases they could say, yes, I've, I've done the incorrect thing and I can, I can pay it or they can look at the photo and say, Oh, I actually wanted to dispute that. And that can dispute online as well. It just allowed us to really increase that efficiency, uh, from end to end and give a better experience for members of the public, um, and be a bit more open and transparent about, um, you know, expiations and fines.
Stephen: (12:45)
And, you know, we had about a 60 to 70% reduction in work hours to process these requests. So which is quite, uh, quite a change. We dashboard or, or all of that through our, through our BI tools to really easily visualize that, uh, internally as well to say, you know, this really backs up the data, the data really backs up what we're doing and that that's quite an important aspect to all of this is to, um, you, you, you put these processes in, but you need the data to feed into the analytics to say yes. Um, it has been a success or why has it not been a success. So to get a, to get a really big reduction like that was really signifies a good success story and, you know, it frees up people to do better things, um, internally as well.
Stephen: (13:30)
So yeah, I mean the other, the other one that I talked about earlier was putting out development applications online. Again, that's providing a digital service online. We had a previous, um, online method that used a different third party application and a different website that you have to go to. And, you know, there was, there was often issues with how it would look on, put the data up and it was a bit clunky. So with our new website, we're able to build integration from our development applications internally using open web standards, um, and no code and low code solutions. So, um, it's using Azure. Uh, Microsoft Azure integration using logic apps, um, without getting too techie. Um, it would basically grab the data from our on premise and put it onto the website and a really nice, easy to use way. Uh, there's no code that you really have to do and it's, we haven't had to pay a developer to do anything. We've done it all ourselves. In-house, uh, pretty much with not using any coding, um, which has been really, really, really good. So yeah, there's a couple of good examples of, of providing those digital services, which are, you know, helping the community a bit and helping ourselves.
Lindsay: (14:40)
Yeah, that's great. And for our US-based, uh, local governments that may not be as familiar with expiation as a term, you were referring to the process of paying parking fines, correct?
Stephen:
That that's correct. That’s the terminology, but yes, it's parking fines.
Lindsay: (14:54))
Are there any particular products I know you touched on this a little bit, uh, but are there any particular products or vendors you've been working with as part of your digital transformation or would you say a majority of these tools have been developed in house?
Stephen: (15:07)
Um, I'll, I'll start off in this way, if you, if you don't mind, Alex, I was going to say a lot of these have been off the shelf, um, sort of things. So a big one from the tech perspective has been you just using Microsoft Azure environment, um, and using Microsoft teams for that collaboration aspect that has been pretty pivotal. And, and in terms of BI reporting and analytics using our power BI and just the entire power platform, um, from a tech perspective and, and getting a lot of these processes going. Um, so yeah, the stuff that we've developed in house has been using off the shelf products, um, which is easily interoperable between, you know, if someone moves on or a project changes, someone else can just come in and take over without having too much technical expertise, which has been really important.
Alex: (15:55)
Yeah I think partnerships is the word that comes up for me. We have been quite lucky to partner with vendors that have a similar approach to the work that we do. So most certainly for the website we partnered with Opencities, um, and we've got their open forums product as well, which is very deal DIY, um, kind of a fair and enabled us to build out the website ourselves, um, get staff across the business, to pop in and edit their own content, um, uh, which is great. And they, obviously those, these kinds of projects don't finish, they’re continually evolving over time. Um, uh, going back a step before that we partner with, um, Atomics in Adelaide to help us to collate all of that data and wrangle it back and do a lot of that customer research. I think that was incredibly useful doing that before we even did the build, we had a blueprint before we went out, so that partnership was great. Um, the other thing I would say is that I'm speaking to him just, you know, in terms of that expiation review, we have been working a lot with our content authors to, um, to write in plain language. So we did some plain language training, um, as well as writing for the web to build up that skill base. And again, um, especially with the plain language, it's getting, um, empathy for, um, all the various people that use your website. And again, it's a, it's an evolving thing we’re sort of getting better at it over time.
Lindsay: (17:16)
And it really ties back to the human centered design piece. Being cognizant of the language that you're using when you're communicating with your residents. They don't have the industry knowledge that you have and the expertise. So, um, being able to really break it down in layman's terms, uh, is, is a valuable skill. And a lot of local governments have overlooked that, um, in, in development of, um, of online resources.
So shifting gears a little. Alex, I think our audience would be really surprised to know that you don't have a technical background. Um, you'd argue it isn't necessary to lead digital transformation efforts. Um, but I think a lot of folks like in digital transformation to tech. Can you share with us what skills you feel are most applicable to your work as a digital transformation lead and how you can be a driver of technology initiatives without that expertise?
Alex: (18:09)
Yeah. Look, I think our staff would realize that I'm not a technical person. Often the conversations I lead in with, um, everyone knows that about me. I think the key principle that I come to this kind of work with is as a storyteller, I guess, because it's how well you, um, tell the stories of what you're doing either in the build of tech or in the communication using the technology platforms that you've got that, um, help it do the job. Again, viewing that technology as a tool to, um, to get us where we need to be. So I think, um, yeah, so without having that tech knowledge technology knowledge, um, I mean the principle was, um, human centered design is to do across council collaborations between subject holders, um, um, designers and builders, you know, working together to understand who each other are and to understand the customer and to slow down and actually, um, yeah, it's all about communication, really.
Alex: (19:08)
And those kinds of skills, engagement, communication, um, you know, mapping stuff out from someone else's perspective, that's more about storytelling and communication than it is about the technology. So I think if you, if you do slow down and you do that kind of work at the head, um, then you're empowering the designers and the builders to, um, design technology that you need as well as, um, empowering, um, subject experts early on. So the onboarding to that technology is much easier because they've got buy-in and they've had, um, input into what comes out the other end, if you're building stuff or designing it,
Lindsay: (19:49)
It's fantastic and really would go far beyond even just being a digital transformation lead. I think you made a lot of great points there that it really comes down to communication and leadership and being able to ask the right questions and surround yourself with people who do have that expertise. Um, and I would encourage others in local government in any leadership type position to not shy away from some of these more scary innovation initiatives, if you will. If you really build this culture of innovation and surround yourself with a strong team you can do a lot of really amazing things even if you don't have all of the expertise yourself.
Stephen: (20:27)
Oh, I was, I was just gonna say, um, cause you know, I've got a fairly technical background. I'm not, I'm not a programmer by any means, but the trick has been just having simple tools and, you know, there's low to no code options available to you. And if you do need those high level tech skills for a project or a transformation thing that you need to do, you know, you just call upon those as you need them. Um, but you want good transference, um, from what is done. So, you know, a lot of the things that we've been doing have been things that people can actually pick up and run with regardless of their technical level, in many cases. And I think that's pretty important. I just thought I'd add that because yeah, the, the leadership is what is, what really matters around this instead of, you know, just purely tech, new technical skills. It's almost like you want to remove the, the technical aspect from the planning in the first place, and then, then figure that out as you go. Um, it's, it's really important for success.
Lindsay: (21:23)
And Steve, you are more of the tech, the tech guy, um, and you work on, um, some internal processes too. I know we've talked a lot about digital transformation and how that is impacting the community. And Alex’s great work there with her team. Can you talk a little bit more about what your role has contributed to the organization?
Stephen: (21:43)
Sure. Um, so, uh, a lot of the work that I do focus on is business intelligence. So before I came on board, um, a lot of processes and reporting and analytics or analytics wasn't really done too much, but it was all very manual based, counting off a screen using spreadsheets, um, you know, taking stabs in the dark at, at what we think is going on. So, uh, one thing that I've been working on probably the last 12 to 18 months is automating a lot of our corporate reporting. Um, and we've been using power BI for that. So the power BI platform, which has been kind of pivotal in that, so previously, um, feeding data up to the exec level, and then the elected member level involved, many jumped through hoops, um, where someone would have a spreadsheet with data spat out from some system and summarize it themselves and then pass that on to the manager.
And there was a lot of information lost between the way. And so we did, we didn't really know what KPIs we're reporting against. We didn't know if we were being successful, not successful, what the trends were across the business. So part of my role has been to automate that and obviously using power BI. So I went through a giant process of meeting with all the different departments in question, and kind of figuring out what they currently report on now. Um, this is, this is ongoing. This is, this is probably never going to end. Um, so figuring out what they report on how they do it, what they want to see, uh, what needs to be fed up to executive and then writing the modeling within power BI for that, um, and packaging that all up as some really nice, fancy looking reports and then publishing that.
Stephen: (23:25)
And just because the way power BI is, is architected it refreshes itself. So there's once it's set up and it's good to go. Um, it all gets fed in automatically then, you know, using Microsoft teams, we have like a corporate performance reporting team where people who are all, um, ownership of that, they own data across, you know, several parts of the organization. They all collaborate there. And we add comments that automatically gets put into the report as well. It's just one giant process. That's really easy to look after. Um, and that gets fed right up through executive and into the elected members, uh, every quarter. And it's basically taken many, many hours and weeks of work because often the reporting period would finish. And then that would start getting ready for the next one. Then that would take three months. Whereas now the reporting period ends, um, they just have a look at the, the data's already there.
The visuals are already there and it's done, um, is very little interaction. So that's, that's probably, um, one of the big time-saving and just great things about, um, some of the technology that we've been using. The other thing that we've worked on is when, you know, the COVID pandemic hit and, you know, it came through Australia cancer, Adelaide, and we had to send workers home. We had to go through a process of obviously like most local governments and councils figuring out how people are going to work from home and what equipment they're going to have and use, and how we’re going to connect in, um, back to work. And at this stage we had, um, we had Skype installed, but it wasn't quite perfect. So within about a week, uh, two weeks tops, we rolled out Teams across the organization and did training.
Stephen: (25:10)
So there was a big work piece around that. Um, and then we also automated a few processes to get people asking, you know their, um, application to work from home, what equipment they needed, and whether it will be approved by their manager and the general manager above them. So, you know, all that hierarchical decisions that have to be made. So we used power automate, which is, you know, Microsoft flow, uh, low code solution, which is a bit like logic apps. So I built some Microsoft form and processes around that. So when someone would apply for work from home, it would send a team's message off to their manager to approve that press the approve button, and that would then go across to their GM. And then they could either press the approval or the, you know, not, not approved button. And this whole process was built within about a day. That’s the power of the power platform is I guess that kind of sells itself. If you say it's the power of it and that's our platform. Um, so the, the really good thing about that is we were able to get, um, set up for work from home and get that going through just some real automation practices using some of those Microsoft flows, um, using teams. And I dunno if anyone who's listening would know, but there you can, you can create adaptive cards within teams as well, which are little, little, really nicely constructed, um, notifications from, um, the, the flow bot within Microsoft flow, uh, that doesn't look like a really awful looking message. You can, you can make it look nice with pictures. And, you know, even throughout this, we credit an Unley bot.
Stephen: (26:48)
We call him only bot and he's a little robot that talks to people. So we use him for whenever we do anything automated related. So, you know, takes kind of that, you know, um, disconnect that people might have having a computer tell them that something's happened. And it's got a little Unley bot that, you know, bleep bloops at them and, and things like that. So, yeah, so it was a process of, um, taking people's approvals for wanting to work from home, streamlining it. So there wasn't a lot of emails flying back and forth. It all existed in teams. It was all automatic and people were able to work from home without really, um, get that approval without having to actually go jump through lots of hoops. It all landed in people's teams in boxes essentially, um, and went that way. So that was quite a, quite a good success under a really, really short timeframe and, you know, props to the rest of our team that all pulled together to get that one going.
Lindsay: (27:41)
Yeah. Fantastic. My last question that I want each of you to address is, uh, what's something that excites you about the future of the City of Unley?
Alex: (27:50)
I think further to everything that Steve was just saying, and it was good to listen to that because obviously that was happening. A lot of that grunt work was happening behind the scenes, and I knew everyone was, you know, um, heads down and, and getting things done. You know, it sounds like they developed a really great process for that, and it did roll out really well. So I think as a culture, as an organization is a skills development and an understanding and an openness to, to change that sort of gets moves over time. It grows over time and, um, all the conversations we've had about, um, customer first, um, design and communication. Um, that's the thing that excites me because I think we've got a great organization that's supportive and, you know, doing their best with legacy systems and ways of doing things. It's not easy and it takes time and it's iterative. Um, but, um, we're coming from a good base. I think that's growing now. So, um, yeah, that's what would excite me.
Stephen: (28:49)
Yeah. Um, just along those trends, what excites me is having that power back to the customer and in a lot of our cases that customers, and then internal person to our organization, but also to external people too. And speaking of internal people and internal customers, you just, you don't want, it's nice to say the change from IT is going to answer all the questions where it's now developing. And it's, it's a slow process of people going, actually I can solve my own problems and we have the tools and the ability to do that and help them along the way. Just going along for that ride is actually really exciting and fun. Um, you know, it's no longer a technical view of, of digital services. Um, just having that human view is actually something that I've learned, you know, cause being quite the tech head, you don't quite get it, but when you start seeing what it all means, uh, being digital first, technology's actually not the answer in many cases, I mean, you end up using it, but it's not the reason. Um, and, you know, using those low and no code solutions that you can build in house with relatively low skill sets, um, that, that are all transferable, um, user-driven analytics that, that excites me as well. Um, people actually taking ownership over their thing instead of relying on one or two people within the organization to do everything. That's what excites me.
Alex: (30:09)
Yeah. And I think I'd add to that too, where it will work in a council that's got leadership, which supports the work to, um, employ someone as a digital transformation leader, you know, two and a half years ago. It was pretty good. There weren't many jobs going around for that kind of skill base back at that time, because I was looking, you know, and, um, yeah, thinking there aren’t jobs written for one, and then I found one. So, um, yeah, I would acknowledge, um, uh, our leadership team too, in this chat because, um, they've been very supportive of this and leading conversations around it.
Stephen: (30:43)
Yeah. That has been really important aspect. It's it's come from the top down for this, this transformation to occur. So yeah. Big props for that.
Lindsay: (30:51)
Yes, definitely. And the support of leadership and council is extremely important as you all know, and this is something that a lot of local governments, a lot of really great innovative folks struggle with is they don't have the support of leadership, um, in the same way that you've just described. So, uh, let this be an inspiration to other local governments out there. And thanks so much for sharing your work, Steve and Alex, and, your website looks great. Uh, we're excited to see you guys continue on your digital transformation journey and keep up the great work in Unley!
Alex:
Thanks, Lindsay. That's great.
Stephen:
Thanks Lindsay. Great to talk to you.
Lindsay: (31:35)
For those of you interested in pursuing digital transformation efforts, the city of only is a great case study, which shows the efficiency pickups associated with deployment of these tools. Not to mention the benefits to engage the wider community. We want to commend Unley’s attention to accessibility and their deployment to deliver more inclusive digital tools to their community, with the pandemic still in full swing. We can all clearly see the need for more inclusive digital services and better ways to engage with the community when face-to-face is not an option. We're seeing local governments across the world. Now leveraging more products to enable digital services and shifting our focus on these digital resources, which we hope are here to stay.
I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano. And this podcast was produced by Govlaunch, the wiki for local government innovation. You can subscribe to hear more stories like this, wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a local government innovator, we hope you'll help us on our mission to build the largest free resource for local governments globally. You can join to search and contribute to the wiki at govlaunch.com. Thanks for tuning in. We hope to see you next time on the Govlaunch podcast.