Indianapolis and Marion County, IN launch the Shift Indy initiative
The government of Indianapolis and Marion County transformed their existing government website into a “Digital City Hall” that offers most of the same services currently accessible at the brick-and-mortar city hall.
Newsworthy
'Digital City Hall' for Indianapolis and Marion County sets a trend for municipal services - StateScoop
Just over a year ago, the government of Indianapolis and Marion County set out to do something audacious — transform their existing government website into a “Digital City Hall,” a modernization effort that would ideally conclude with the same services being accessible to citizens visiting their government’s website as those present at the brick-and-mortar city hall. The goal of the modernization effort is to equally support the needs of the citizens in the county and the city, Chief Communications Officer Abbey Brands told StateScoop in June. Indianapolis and Marion County are equal parts of a “uni-government” that shares public services between the two entities. The IT needs of city and county agencies are handled by the Information Services Agency (ISA), which is also leading the website initiative. StateScoop chronicled the initiative, dubbed “Shift Indy,” last June, when the website only had four public services accessible on it. Since then, it has grown immensely, more than quadrupling the number of […]
'Digital City Hall' for Indianapolis and Marion County sets a trend for municipal services - StateScoop
New digital city hall promises convenient, efficient services - Indianapolis Business Journal
More than 50 city services—from requesting extra police patrols to filing property tax appeals to requesting a streetlight in your neighborhood—are now offered digitally at my.indy.gov.
New digital city hall promises convenient, efficient services - Indianapolis Business Journal
indy.gov
indy.gov
Destaques
Indianapolis and Marion County launched the Shift Indy initiative in 2017 to modernize their online presence with a new website.
The new site offers more than 50 services, enabling residents to interact with local government at their own convenience.
Migrating to cloud and eliminating vendor contracts for on-premises servers and storage enabled the city and county to reduce the budget for their shared IT team by more than $3 million.
Sumário
Indianapolis’ old website was built before the advent of smart phones. It was unresponsive, unsearchable, and short on features. As a result, residents often had no choice but to visit the City-County Building in person for all manner of tasks. Driving downtown, parking, and finding the appropriate office all took their toll on citizens’ time and wallets; and city staff were frequently overwhelmed by the volume of in-person inquiries.
In 2017, Indianapolis and Marion County resolved to modernize their online presence, and kicked off the $ Shift Indy$ project to build a new website. The goal was to make every service that was available at the brick-and-mortar City Hall also available online, so that citizens without the time or inclination to visit in person could interact with local government at their own convenience.
The first step was to create a steering committee with representatives from all city and county departments. This committee helped secure internal buy-in early on in the process, and put together a list of 1,000 requirements for the new website sourced from every agency. The team also reached out to citizens for feedback through social media and other channels.
The joint city-county Information Services Agency partnered with Daniels Associates Inc. and $ CityBase$ to build the new site. The pilot went live with four public services that were judged to have the most potential to save citizens time and eliminate barriers to access for underserved individuals. The site grew rapidly from there, and today it offers more than 50 services alongside numerous searchable resources.
Indianapolis and Marion County allocated $2.4 million for the project, and it has already seen a return on its investment. By migrating from on-premises servers and storage to cloud, the Information Services Agency has been able to cut its budget by more than $3 million since 2017. Additionally, digitizing services has helped the local government to eliminate numerous manual and paper-based processes – enabling staff to work more productively and accurately.