Case Study

Nottinghamshire County Council

Working to make Nottinghamshire a great place to live, work, and grow old as part of the wider community.

Technology
  • Online Community
  • Surveys
  • News & Events
Services
  • Design
  • Development
  • Support
Sector
  • Councils
  • Community

Project Goals

Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) are the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Nottinghamshire. The council provides a plethora of services to their constituents including education, social care, transport, and waste management.

The council provides a wide range of digital services via the web, but were interested in a mobile MyNotts app to ensure that their digital estate remained future-proof, and to allow their constituents to utilise the most convenient platform to them. There is an ever-expanding proportion of users that solely access digital services on a mobile device; either a phone or a tablet.

An additional goal for the council is to support the legislative goals of elected officials. In particular, there was an appetite within the council to improve the process for reporting highways issues.

The Results

Features

  1. Report It!
  2. Surveys
  3. What’s On
  4. COVID-19 Hub

Enabling you to report issues to Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) easily and effectively.

Analysis

Given the wide range of services that the council provide, it was unrealistic to aim for feature parity with the existing website for an initial release. We used an MVP approach to focus on the highest value features while laying the foundations that the council could iterate on in the future, with the overall goal of moving toward parity over time.

In order to determine which features were the most valuable we examined 3 main criteria:

Which features were most used on the website?

Which areas generated the most support calls?

We utilised the experience of the project team at the council and what they felt were the most valuable features.

01.
Report It!

Allowing the public to report highways maintenance issues was a top priority because it’s a heavily used area of the website – it generated a large number of support calls, it had the backing of councillors, and the website provided a sub-optimal experience on mobile devices.

The “Report It!” section of the app is focused on convenience and allowing the user to report any issue they are having easily, avoiding any further frustration. This is supported by utilising device features, such as GPS and the device camera, to provide a much smoother experience than would be possible via the web.

02.
Surveys

The MyNotts app utilises the in-built MemConnect surveys functionality to give the councils constituents not only a channel to feedback on the app, but also to give their constituents a voice on local issues.

The council have also used this functionality to allow users to express areas for improvement within the app and additional functionality they would like to see in future releases.

03.
What’s On

The MyNotts app provides a useful channel for promoting local news, events and attractions. This is primarily focused on Nottinghamshire residents but additionally promotes tourism in the area by providing a comprehensive view of what is going on around the county.

04.
COVID-19 Hub

Launching in early 2020, the app provided a key channel of communication during the coronavirus pandemic. The council acted swiftly to establish a coronavirus hub within the app to provide the latest advice & guidance. This hub also allowed residents to sign up as volunteers and supported vulnerable residents to request a range of support including everything from food deliveries to social and physical wellbeing support.

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