Canterbury Council To Move 85 Percent Of Services Online By 2019

Canterbury_Cathedral_-_Portal_Nave_Cross-spire

Two-year, £200,000 contract with Jadu intended to create ‘Amazon-like’ user experience for Canterbury’s 160,000 residents

Canterbury City Council is looking to provide 85 percent of its services online within the next two years through a deal with UK company Jadu.

The contract for around £200,000, sourced through the G-Cloud framework, will see the council adopting a ‘real-time’ case-management system that allows users to track the progress of their interactions with the council around the clock, after the fashion of Amazon’s e-commerce websites.

Intuitive experience

Using Jadu’s Continuum CXM and Continuum CMS the council plans to have 80 percent of its services online in the first year and 85 percent by the second year, ending in 2019.

Canterbury_Cathedral_-_Portal_Nave_Cross-spireThe contract is to initially focus on bins and recycling, one of the council’s highest-demand functions, moving on to events management, including licensing and booking.

The council said it would then look at moving on to other high-demand resources such as complaints and freedom-of-information requests.

Centralised platform

“Our focus is on making digital customer services the channel of choice for residents and that means every aspect of design is based on their needs,” the council’s digital transformation head Peter Davies in a statement. “It’s all about the user experience and making it as easy as possible for people to communicate with us and make use of their council services.”

He said Jadu’s platform was chosen because it provides centralised work queues where all teams can access and manage queries, with customers, partners and third-party providers notified by email of any changes in status.

The two-year agreement with Jadu commenced last month, the council said, adding it has contracted creative agency Spacecraft Digital to redesign Canterbury.gov.uk and Canterbury.co.uk using Jadu’s cloud-based website creation tools.

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