Build connected local government services that are by the people, for the people

At its core, government should be human centred. To deliver the best experiences for people, local and borough councils should consider putting citizens and employees first. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for many public sector organisations to rely on legacy operating systems to get work done. These systems and processes are often siloed making it difficult for council meet the changing needs of the residents, businesses, and communities they serve. Now, as councils look to transform and build connected digital councils, new opportunities arise to make service delivery and operations more human, and citizen - focused.

Local Government has entered an era of human-centred design: where priority is placed on people’s needs and what is most convenient for them, putting user, citizen experiences first.

What it takes to build an experience-led connected council

Employee Experience (EX) and Customer Experience (CX) have both become major priorities for many local authorities. And though both are undoubtedly beneficial, they are often treated separately, creating missed opportunities for truly transformational experiences.

But the future of local government work is changing. As technology advances, demographics shift, and as citizen expectations evolve, councils have an amazing opportunity to re-evaluate and rearchitect how and where work gets done. Local governments need to adapt and consider how to improve all interactions, both employee and citizen.

There’s an undeniable link between a good employee experience and better citizen experience—when employees are happy and motivated, they provide better service for citizens. But experiences cannot be improved overnight. It’s the intersection between humans, processes and technology that yields the biggest change. 

Total Experience (TX), a strategy that creates superior shared experiences by connecting the employee and customer experiences, seeks to unite these for a better outcome for all concerned.

The role of technology

Technology, smart data use and emerging automation can transform local authorities organisation-wide to fully integrated front, middle and back offices and transform core processes and workforces, enhancing self-service accessibility, response times, performance and operational efficiency.

“New workforce models and innovative approaches driven by the pandemic response are expected to gain momentum, freeing government employees to flexibly shift their focus to work that is value-based and customer-centred”, says Liz Forsyth, Global Head, Infrastructure, Government and Healthcare - KPMG International.

All local authorities are seeing growing demand for faster, digitally-enabled service delivery. Technology investments have traditionally been at the bottom of a long list of priorities, but the pandemic has shown that technologies that can connect siloed legacy systems, cloud services and low code applications provide a way to ensure services and solutions are consistent across their region.

Removing the roadblocks to building the government of the future

Local government offices of the future will be experience-driven—but getting there is no simple task. Like any new initiative, leaders face their own set of challenges in building experience-driven organisations. A 2021 ServiceNow and ESI ThoughtLab report surveyed 900 senior business leaders in five industries across 13 countries to identify the top-of-mind challenges leaders face when building an experience-driven organisation:

1.     Uncertainty around the potential ROI and business case, since experience-focus is still a new concept for many leaders and management teams

2.     Lack of shared metrics for EX and CX, making it daunting to bridge the gap and develop a unified strategy

3.     Overall employee resistance to change driven by employees wanting to stick to known approaches and ways of operating

How these challenges are addressed will influence the success of your TX strategy. To be truly experience-driven, local authorities will need to go beyond treating customer and employee experiences as separate disciplines and take a TX approach to interactions. With a more holistic human centred and connected strategy, councils and their partners can improve citizen outcomes with lower costs, and better attract and retain an engaged workforce.

Discover how organisations are driving total experience with the capabilities of the ServiceNow Platform. For more information, please call us on freephone 0800 640 8049, or visit servicenow.com/uk/localgov.

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