The authority has used a unified digital platform to integrate a complex estate of customer contact channels, applications and back office services, writes Rob McCarthy, CEO and founder of GOSS
Public sector organisations face a plethora of legacy systems and historical processes which can make things difficult when it comes to delivering digital transformation today.
An underpinning requirement for success is to seamlessly bridge the gap between all customer contact channels and the back office systems that support service delivery. But often this is attempted with existing systems that can be difficult to integrate with new self-service functions at the front end, and sometimes new systems are procured by service teams without any internal communication.
This leaves a messy situation in which information does not always flow freely from request to service delivery and it is not always clear to the public how they can best interact with the organisation.
Add to that the financial challenges facing the sector, the significant costs of procurement and migrating from one system to another, plus shortages of digital, data and technology skills, and there are some severe challenges hindering transformation.
There are many ways to overcome these challenges using the latest technologies. One is through the use of a unified and open digital platform, on which functions can be built for specific uses cases, and smoother integration of modern self-service channels with back office systems and specialist line of business applications can be delivered.
Norfolk's approach
Norfolk County Council has taken this approach with deployment of the GOSS Digital Platform. Its head of digital customer experience, Michelle Carter, described its migration away from complex legacy technologies to the platform at the UKAuthorITy Powering Public Services conference in March, saying that the council had been working with GOSS for two years and was on the verge of completing the move.
She said there had been two big features in the need for a technology refresh. One was the need for simplification, getting away from a siloed structure in which a range of systems such as those for the contact centre, web content, online accounts and web forms had been “stitched together”, creating a complex estate that was difficult and costly to manage, and which undermined productivity.
The other was the feeling that some of the legacy technologies were holding the council back. Some were rich in functionality but arguably over-engineered for Norfolk’s needs, licensing costs were proving prohibitive, and while there was scope to build new solutions on some of these systems, this often required advanced technical skills that were in short supply. In addition, the council felt uncomfortable with its relationships with some suppliers.
This prompted its procurement of the GOSS platform, which integrates with systems from multiple suppliers for a range of functions – such as council tax, housing benefit, planning and social care – and provides a hub for the public to interact with all of them through a customer services advisor or AI agents by phone, email, SMS, live chat, social media or face-to-face with an advisor.
It can also be connected to systems for automation, websites, e-forms, APIs and other applications.
Customer connections
This has enabled Norfolk to connect customers with a range of systems through a single platform. Some of these are controlled directly, including 10 websites, the bookings function, the myNorfolk online account, over 40 online forms and more than 20 customer service workflows; and others through supporting integrations, including Pay360 for payments, Azure AD/B2C for identity management, ArcGIs for mapping, OS Places for postcode look-up and Mayrise for highway defects.
Carter identified a number of key features of the platform. They include: a standardised code base, with unified settings and reusable components to underpin the web estate; the capabilities for streamlined content management and the application and control of consistent standards; a shared customer service hub application for managing requests and enquiries across front and back office; and an end-to-end service for data and reporting.
This has produced significant benefits for Norfolk residents including more accessible web content – through over 99% compliance with WCAG 2.2 standards – better management of their data, a more joined up experience and more contacts resolved at the initial point of contact. In addition to delivery a better customer experience, the platform is also providing operational efficiencies and reduced running costs, and its low code capability is removing the reliance on outside development skills.
“Also, the flexible licensing model on the GOSS platform has enabled us to transform the way we do things and to re-engineer how we manage customer requests and enquiries,” Carter said. “We can now do it in a truly managed, end-to-end way.”
This is also contributing to the expectation that Norfolk will obtain a full return on its investment within four years.
AI exploration
For GOSS, the next step will be to explore and develop prototypes of AI solutions supported by the platform, promising further capabilities for Norfolk and other organisations.
As new technologies and innovations come along we want our customers to be able tap into them as quickly as possible. For example, we are aiming to develop a plug-in function for AI solutions that make it easy for the customer to integrate whichever one they want with the platform, and to provide them with prompt templates for questioning AI.
We are also beginning to look at new AI models which, instead of requiring users to set a specific prompt for a response, enables them to set a desired outcome then produces a plan and finds the tools to execute it. These are becoming more powerful than the prompt and response mechanisms that have been used so far, and it will not be long before a user will have an array of agents for a proliferation of tasks.
We have been liaising with the Government Digital Service and our platform now has integrations with GOV.UK One Login, Notify and Pay. This is an important step in ultimately joining up services for the citizen, from local government, central government and the wider public sector.
It all creates great potential for a more simplified and cost-effective approach to dealing with the public sector’s technology challenges. Combined with attention to processes and people, this is a major enabler for organisation-wide transformation.
To hear how Norfolk is transforming the customer experience watch Michelle Carter's presentation below, and for more information about how GOSS's Digital Platform can enable organisation-wide transformation watch my own underneath that:
