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.
Key Benefits
- Two week EmbArrk™ workshop captures project requirements and specification.
- Open, flexible architecture comprising Liferay, JSF and JBoss ESB.
- Cost effective hybrid Agile delivery model.
- Collaborative and efficient working procedures.
- User centred design incorporating new design language.
- Project delivered on-time and to Camden Council’s satisfaction.
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.
The Waste Collection project saw Arrk Group take full ownership of delivering a key part of the Customer Access Programme.
Challenge
Making things simple takes hard work and although a relatively simple and straightforward application for users, behind the scenes the new service involved communicating with a wide variety of existing systems, which made the project hugely complex and technically challenging.
As part of Camden Council’s new customer access programme the waste management service had to be integrated with the new Camden Account, furthermore, the project was the first to go live incorporating Camden’s new mobile first UI and branding guidelines.
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.
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.
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