Carmarthenshire County Council harnesses govService features to re-open public services and generate new revenue streams
Granicus, a provider of digital solutions to the public sector, has announced that Carmarthenshire County Council has gone live with its redesigned and updated Self Service Portal. The solution, which went live on 16th June, builds on the council’s use of the Granicus govService platform – providing citizens with better access to services and supporting revenue generation as the region emerges from the coronavirus lockdown. Carmarthenshire currently has over 45,000 citizens signed up to Hwb, its online service portal.
The Self Service Portal has recently allowed the council to create a new public facing booking system for the use of its Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC) which has enabled citizens to book appointments to drop off refuse. The launch of this service saw a record 8,000 new sign-ups during the first week of launch. To enable the re-opening of public libraries in the county, a new book reservation and collection service was provisioned, and for the council’s country park, online purchase of season and daily tickets have been provisioned for its customers. These new launches will enable the council to re-open selected services in a safe manner, with these booking systems helping to control the number of people using a service.
The council is utilising Granicus’ new CaseViewer solution, an enhanced case management tool that improves on the functionality of the existing dashboards by using predefined or custom filters that bring residents through the service process faster and more efficiently – saving the council valuable time in its backend workflow. Both the Self-Service Portal and CaseViewer are bi-lingual, meaning that all text within the platform appears in both Welsh and English; a critical requirement for all Welsh pubic services.
Julian Williams, Applications Development Manager at Carmarthenshire County Council, says “The govService Self Service Portal empowers the citizens of Carmarthenshire to take control of their own public services while remaining safely in their homes. Through our Hwb platform, they have access to the council and their own information any time of the day or night. In today’s COVID-19 reality, we knew we needed to accelerate the use of the govService tools so that our customers can experience a more modern and seamless experience in their interactions with local government services.”
Sophie Harris-Edmond, Customer Success Consultant at Granicus says. “Working with the team at Carmarthenshire on these new developments to its govService platform, we have been impressed by the phenomenal speed at which they’ve been able to drive new processes during Covid-19 so they can meet the requirements of their citizens. We’re also extremely proud to be one of the only platforms that can support Carmarthenshire with its bi-lingual needs.”
Citizens can now begin booking appointments and making payments for public services through Hwb, powered by govService. The council is also currently implementing a single sign on feature with Granicus for its Revenues and Benefits service, which will go live in September 2020, supporting its desire for channel shift for residents that can self serve, while keeping a single customer record and consistent customer service across all services.