Digital Plans & Playbooks



Digital plans and playbooks present goals and strategies for developing and improving a city's digital services.


Benefits & Problems Addressed

Simplified & effective digital services across the municiple enterprise: A citywide playbook help provide a seamless look adn experience across disparate Departments.

Development with users: Co-creating plans and services assures end-users develop services and products from their needs and abilities.

Expand easy access to services as more people go mobile: As more people go mobile (on tablets and smart phones), they expect government services to work more like phone apps.


Tips & Techniques

Getting started: Determine the porfolio of existing digital services and what improvements are needed. Research the latest playbooks issued by peer cities. Check local tech accelerators to see if civic entrepreneurs can add value. Improtantly, assess existing websites and apps people already use and build on those.

Elements of a plan or playbook: (1) Guiding principles developed by stakeholders of end users and city service providers, (2) Program goals, (3) Strategies and (4) Implementation roadmaps.  If resources are limited, prioritize services in need of digitization.

Examples of strategies: (1) Translating services into various languages. (2) steps to create apps with users, (3) working groups across Departments, (4) integrating with other neighborhood digital sites and services, (5) create a design manual, (6) Develop customer reporting ( or 311 apps) with ability to sumbit images/videos, (7) Tech infrastructure including broaband, wi-fi and Internet of Things (IoT), (8),Customer service protocols to respond to requests & fix technical glitches.

Trends: Look for (1) cybersecurity, (2) augmented and virtual reality features, (3) chats, (4) use of beacons and notifications, (5) hackathons and check-ins to determine is exiting problems being addressed and what new challenges on the horizon.

Hot Buttons: Data sharing, availability of open data, interoperability, privacy and security, access to people who do not use computers or mobile products.


Resources

Kansas City Digital Drive site: Kansas City, MO, US