Over 900,000 people call Indianapolis home, and as the city continues to evolve and grow, the digitization of its resources has become a priority for the mayor of Indy to provide the residents. That’s why Guilford Group joined the Shift Indy initiative to transform the community’s central online hub into a comprehensive Digital City Hall. Now those who call Indy home can conduct their business with the city and consume its services through indy.gov.
Challenge
The existing website for the city of Indianapolis was a thorough source for information that residents could obtain on city services, public safety announcements, administration and tax updates along with job postings.
Indy’s Mayor, Joe Hogsett, wanted the city site to offer more interactive services by transforming the current site into a Digital City Hall. “With today’s technology, people have a world of resources at their fingertips — City and County services should be just as accessible for busy residents,” said Mayor Joe Hogsett. [source]
Solution
Guilford Group partnered with the City of Indianapolis and Marion County Information Services Agency and CityBase to help Shift Indy create a new online experience for both users and city workers. The team at Guilford Group spent 25 months performing rigorous testing on the various functions of the Digital City Hall. New functions were added in sprints to the website each month, and regression tested - both manually and automatically. Guilford Group’s testing spanned multiple browsers and devices, with multiple security and speed performance tests. Our team also worked diligently on establishing equal accessibility for all users, including language options in both English and Spanish. Quality Assurance using trackable defect tickets in JIRA were utilized to thoroughly document, identify and correct any issues that arose during the process.
Results
Residents of Indy can now perform 80-90% of the services the city of Indianapolis offers through their new Digital City Hall. The website was transformed into a comprehensive platform where individuals can discover new job opportunities, apply for a homestead deduction, watch live county meetings, request police patrols in neighborhoods, contact the mayor, and much more. This new Digital City Hall is continuously striving to make the lives of the people of Indy as seamless and convenient as possible. Further, the City of Indianapolis Information Services Agency went on to win the 2018 Corporate Innovator of the Year MIRA award for Shift Indy!
This initiative has been an unmatched experience for everyone involved. We could not have accomplished what we have without the support of those around us and the commitment of a devoted team.
- Ken Clark, Chief Information Officer for the City of Indianapolis & Marion County
