Camden Council's Wheelie Good Waste and Recycling Digital Service

We helped Camden Council develop and deploy a new waste and recycling digital service to its 225,000 residents.

The engagement commenced with an intensive two-week Embarrk workshop followed by a fixed term development project soon after. The service was delivered on-time and to Camden Council’s satisfaction using our Rapid Digitisation service.

Customer

Camden Council caters for a residential population in excess of 225,000 covering a highly diverse part of the capital city. The council was created by the London Government Act 1963 and replaced three local authorities.

The council provides a range of services to citizens and businesses and is continuously improving its digital customer service offering through a far reaching and wide ranging digital transformation portfolio.

As part of its Digital Strategy, the council is implementing an open systems technology platform that is flexible and robust so that it can better respond to the needs of its residents, businesses and services.

Camden Council is collaborating at a regional and national level to ensure there is more choice, better value for money and greater use of open systems within local government.

Residential population in excess of 225,000

Created in 1963 by London Government Act

Continuously improving its digital customer service

Collaborating at a regional and national level

Situation

A fundamental aspect of Camden Council’s drive to digitally upgrade its services is its Customer Access Portfolio. As part of this, all common services and transactions will be improved and made accessible online to citizens; including paying rent and council tax, registering to vote and waste and recycling collection. The council is rolling out a high quality digital experience where repeat users quickly and easily self-serve. This cuts costs in delivering these services and frees up council resources.

In need of a digital upgrade to its services

All common services and transactions needed improving with online accessibility

Required a high-quality, self-service, digital experience for its users

Needed to cut costs and free up council resources

Solution

The initial Embarrk workshop involved key stakeholders at Camden Council and captured requirements and specification. Following the workshop and dedicated distributed team was deployed on the build and testing of the application. The team used our hybrid Agile methodology to ensure that the project met strict date milestones within an agreed cost envelope.

An on-site coordinator ensured clear channels of communications, while regular show and tell sessions meant that Camden could provide feedback which would shape subsequent development work.

As per Camden Council’s digital strategy, to control both upfront and operation costs, the architecture was based on a stack of Open Source components, including JBoss ESB, JSF and Liferay, thus ensuring that the platform would be secure, scalable and robust as an equivalent proprietary based solution.

Two week EmbArrk workshop capturing project requirements and specifications

Cost effective hybrid Agile delivery model

Collaborative and efficient working procedures

User centred design incorporating new design language

Outcomes

The waste and recycling management application became the third major service overhauled following in-house developments of its Parking and Housing services. An important aspect of the final solution has been the message the council has been able to now send to its citizens regarding recycling and the services it had on offer to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. The new service, although in its infancy, is already reducing dependency on the council’s call centre resources as residents start to switch to the online service.

Project delivered on-time and to Camden Council's satisfaction

Application became the third major service overhauled

Reducing dependency on the council's call centre resources

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