An Opportunity
To Digitally Transform
Your Municipality
The Citizen Action Center is Digital Government Brought to Life.
The Citizen Action Center re-imagines virtually every aspect of how citizens interact with their municipal government. It creates an internet-based environment where citizens can do business with their local government easily and at their convenience. Where municipalities can dramatically streamline their operations without the need to replace legacy software and systems. And where municipalities can generate positive cash flow.
Your citizen customer uses Amazon, Google and Netflix on a daily basis. They expect local government to offer the same type of easy-to-use online system to conduct their business with their municipality and local utilities. Government leaders must follow the private-sector trend, recognizing the potential cost benefits and better service outcomes from digital transformation.
In the Citizen Action Center, Citizens Can…
Manage Their Utility Account
Utility customers can manage one account or multiple accounts from the same portal. The can see an exact image of the utility bill for each account and can download it or print it. Customers can pay one bill or multiple bills in a single transaction using their credit or debit card or their bank account. They can make their payment as a one-time transaction or set up an automatically recurring payment.
They can also see the history of their account. Every bill they have received. Every payment they have made. Each month’s consumption. And this inforamtion eir consumption history over time in a graph.
Pay Any Bill
That’s right. Any obligation to the municipality. Could be a parking ticket, a fine for a code violation, airport hanger rent, a fee to reserve a picnic pavilion, taxes or court costs.
Citizens can use their debit or credit card. Or they can pay directly from their bank account. If they are paying a recurring expense they can even set up an automatic payment. Of course, all transaction information is encrypted.
To help keep track of payments, the Citizen Action Center keeps a record of every payment made in your citizen’s private account.
Submit Any Form or Document
Citizens are tired of downloading a PDF form or document and then trying to find a typewriter to fill it out or scratch it out by hand. In the Citizen Action Center constituents can fill out any form or document as a fillable PDF. If they are stuck on a question or the data requested for a field, they can save their work and come back to complete it later.
When they are finished, they can submit completed forms directly to the issuing department. A copy of every completed form is saved in their private account for future reference.
Address an Issue With a Staff Member
Forget switchboards transferring you to the wrong person and calls and voice mails that are never returned. The Citizen Action Center helps constituents find the right staff member to address the issue on their mind.
They can communicate in writing so their can be no questions. And the system is designed to elicit information specific to their concern or issue. If they are reporting a nasty pothole, the system will get the address and even allow them to upload a photo.
All submissions and their open or closed status are available for supervisor review.
Submit a Single Moving Notification
No longer will citizens have to spend time on the phone notifying each municipal department of their moving plans. Whether they are moving into, within or out of your community, a single submission on the citizen action center will do the trick.
Citizens can specify those departments with which they maintain accounts. The Citizen Action Center will then route their notification to each of those departments as well as other departments with a need to know.
Register Their Household or Business
Citizens can register their household and provide information about residents of the household — even pets. That way emergency responders can can be aware of the number of people for which they need to account and whether there are infants or elderly or someone with special needs. Registering children in the household allows parks and recreation departments to notify you of programs in your area. And it allows schools to better project demand before the start of the school year.
Registering your business gives emergency responders instant access to contact to your contact information and alerts them to any dangers in your workplace.
In the Citizen Action Center, Municipalities Can …
Process Payments in Seconds
Forget keystroking mountains of paper to post payments. With the Citizen Action Center all payments — parking tickets, tax bills, utility bills, code violation fines, whatever — are immediately desposited into the bank account you specify. No more running to the bank to make a deposit. Then you receive an electronic file of each payment made so you can upload those payments into the software used by your department to run their operation.
Managers can analyze payment data to make better informed decisions about their department.
Slash Time to Process Forms, Documents
Eliminate keystroking data from forms and documents submitted by citizens. And forget about struggling to read illegible handwriting. With the Citizen Action Center all forms and documents are completed online as a fillable PDF, so you receive a neat, clean typed copy. But that’s not all. You can also download an electronic file of all data in the fillable fields so it can be imported into your department’s operating software.
Managers can analyze the number of each form or document submitted to see seasonality, plan staffing requirements or gauge citizen priorities.
Handle Citizen Issues Efficiently
Forget having citizen issues like street racing or blight spread out in individual staff member’s inboxes and voice mail accounts with no way for you to get a a handle on them. With the Citizen Action Center, every citizen issue is funneled through the same channel directly to the responsible staffer.
There is a written record of every issue submitted as well as your staff member’s response. There is tracking to show you what issues are really on your citizens’ minds, which have been closed to the citizen’s satisfaction, and which are still open or languishing. You are in the driver’s seat!
Keep Tabs on Your Constituents
When your citizens alert their municipality of their plans to move into, within or out of your community, you have the opportunity both provide a citizen service and gain valuable data.
The Citizen Action Center will automatically route the citizen’s moving dates to the departments with which they indicate they have an account relationship as well as any other departments you specify. This data provides a valuable tool to maintain current your constituent database as well as to analyze inflow and outflow data for better planning in anticipation of future constituent needs.
Gather Household and Business Data
The registration module in the Citizen Action Center is the municipality’s opportunity to build a comprehensive database of residents, businesses, properties and property owners. This database can become the single master constituent database from which all municpal departments operate.
It can be used immediately to inform first responders of the situation to which they are being called. How many people are at this address? Infants? Elderly? Those with special needs? Is the family pet a toy poodle or a doberman? The data can also be used by schools to estimate the number of school-age children by age group and by parks and recreation of notify family in a specific area of upcoming events.
