Our principles for change
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
Simplicity is the overarching objective for all the improvement and change within the areas covered by this strategy.
We want to develop simple:
- digital services where residents can find the information they need
- processes that deliver exactly what the customer needs when they need it.
- online forms and intuitive processes that can be used without help.
If residents do need help, we'll offer help for those who need it, which are fully covered within other sections of this DDaT strategy.
To achieve this, our DDaT strategy guiding principles are:
Single view of the council for customers
This DDaT Strategy has a strategic aim for customers to access the council’s online services from a single website: Medway Council website.
The Council used to have lots of websites, hosted by different providers and utilising different platforms.
A programme of website rationalisation has been underway for several years to migrate the different websites into the council’s corporate platform.
A more robust governance process has been put in place to stop services adopting new websites, or online platforms, without seeking the appropriate approvals.
Having all services in one place, within a single website, is a key objective of this DDaT strategy.
The evolution of this objective is to provide access to council systems and services via a single portal or customer account.
This will make it easy for customers to interact with us.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Single Sign On (SSO) authentication will be used to seamlessly connect systems.
This will allow us to present a customer’s information from various systems in a single place, and also allow a customer to update their own details and carry out self service transactions.
For example, from their account page, a resident could:
- check their Council Tax balance
- change their payment schedule
- join a Council leisure facility
- report a missed bin collection.
Mobile responsive website and apps
Our website is fully mobile responsive, which means the website design and content is optimised to be functional on devices of different sizes, including:
- smartphones
- tablets
- large smart TVs.
Some services believe that for a mobile digital presence they need to create an app.
Apps do offer some advantages such as:
- deep integration into software systems
- native functionality (for example, accessing a smartphone camera)
- push notifications (the ability to send messages directly to users via the app)
- bespoke personalisation for regular users
- offline access (still use the app without an internet connection).
However, apps often need development and design resource as they need to be compatible with multiple devices and operating systems.
There are also increased costs in adding them to app stores.
There is an increased burden of duplicating content between the app and website to ensure all content:
- is simple
- is accessible
- is usable
- complies with all digital service standards.
Through the use of new technology, a write once, consume many model will be used.
This means the same content can be pulled into the website, intranet, app or portal from a central repository.
We also need to consider the overall user experience.
If every council service developed its own app, then a user would need to download multiple apps on their device, which may create a barrier.
Corporate Management Team have endorsed Digital Service Standards to guide decisions on whether something should be an app or web content.
Where possible, the website will be used to offer information and services to residents.
The launch of the My Account functionality in 2022 will provide the potential to offer more personalisation to users across different services.
The use of an app will be considered on a case by case basis and will follow the same procedure for requesting a new digital presence or software system, which is outlined within this DDaT strategy.