Empowering public sector digital evolution

Amidst rapid advancements in digital transformation, public sector organisations find themselves under mounting pressure to modernise services, optimise operations, and deliver seamless online interactions for their citizens. With this in mind, in this blog-post we highlight several ways the GOSS Digital Platform is empowering GOSS clients, streamlining processes, enhancing citizen engagement, and helping organisations achieve their digital transformation goals.

Digitise Services, Enhance Efficiency and Improve User Experience

The cornerstone of the GOSS Digital Platform lies in its ability to enable organisations to build, deliver, and manage online services and websites seamlessly. By leveraging this platform, public sector organisations can digitise services, enhancing accessibility and convenience for citizens. Through the Platform's self-service portal functionality, users can effortlessly submit requests, access information, and make payments online, thereby reducing dependency on traditional, resource-intensive channels.

Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council stands as a testament to the transformative power of the use of GOSS self-service tools in the public sector. The council embarked on a significant digital journey, leveraging the suite of GOSS Self-Service capabilities to revolutionise their customer service and back-office operations. By addressing the challenges posed by their previous end-of-life CRM system and its lack of back-end integration, the council implemented GOSS Self-Service to empower customers' online activity, automate queries, and streamline internal processes, significantly improving service efficiency and customer satisfaction.

The whole team at GOSS working on the Lewes and Eastbourne Digital Platform project, from project management, design, development and support delivered beyond our expectations. GOSS' willingness to listen, work pro-actively with us on some challenging requests, respond quickly to queries and issues throughout was a breath of fresh air.

Michele Ranger - Digital Services Team Leader
Lewes and Eastbourne Councils 

Streamlined Operations through Automation

Automation is key to enabling public sector organisations to deliver their digital transformation plans more efficiently and at speed. By replacing manual tasks with intuitive forms, the GOSS Digital Platform helps to eliminate inefficiencies associated with data re-keying and consequently helps to streamline processes. This not only boosts operational efficiency but also frees up resources, allowing organisations to redirect efforts towards resolving customer requests and improving service delivery.

Hillingdon Council's rapid deployment of the COVID-19 grant scheme application demonstrates the agility and efficiency of GOSS Forms in enabling the delivery of critical services during emergencies. Leveraging the GOSS Digital Platform, the council built the grant application in just four days, demonstrating the Platform's responsiveness and effectiveness. By streamlining both application submission and internal processing using GOSS Case Management technology, Hillingdon efficiently managed eligibility assessments and payment arrangements. Throughout the process, residents received regular updates via email, providing transparency and assurance. This swift and seamless integration highlights GOSS Forms ability to facilitate rapid deployment of essential services, ensuring timely assistance to citizens in need during crisis situations.

Using the GOSS low-code tools, we were able to build the whole end-to-end business service within 4 days incorporating online applications and a full case review, approval and processing for our applications team. The speed at which we have been able to develop the service has been key to the project and hopefully providing a much-improved service for Citizens.

Alun Rees - Channel Migration Manager 
Hillingdon Council 

Simplified Content Management and Website Maintenance

As an organisation's web presence grows so too does its online real estate and the number of websites to manage. Using the GOSS Digital Platform organisations can easily manage their entire online presence in one system. With the GOSS Content Management capabilities of the Platform, its intuitive interface empowers website administrators to efficiently manage their websites, subsites, and intranets all from a single platform. Furthermore, the Platform offers WCAG-compliant themes and templates, ensuring consistency and accessibility to all.

Fenland District Council's initiative to bolster local economic growth through the Fenland for Business subsite highlights the significant benefits of leveraging GOSS Content Management. With a vast constituency of over 102,000 citizens and more than 3,160 businesses, the council recognised the importance of overcoming limitations and enhancing integration. Collaborating with the GOSS Creative Team, they embarked on a journey to refresh the subsite's design and migrate it to the GOSS Digital Platform. This strategic move streamlined their content management processes, elevating the user experience. It provided businesses in the Fenland area with valuable resources for growth, marking a significant achievement in the council's mission to support local businesses. Additionally, it increased internal efficiency by consolidating their web presence into a single, comprehensive platform.

The CMS enables us to create bilingual content using a variety of templates. Customer feedback has said that our content is clear and uncluttered. Digital forms can be easily created by non-technical people yet very complex, intelligent forms with integrations can also be developed by specialists to meet any possible need. We have been able to adapt the CRM and My Account functions to meet our customer and contact centre needs very easily to be able to find job / request status updates and to display individual information to customers at a glance e.g. council tax account info.

Sarah Ryan - Digital Access Manager 
Powys County Council 

Enhanced Customer Service through Case Management

Efficient case management is essential for delivering prompt and effective customer service. With the GOSS Digital Platform, organisations can automate case tasks, reducing response times and preventing service delivery bottlenecks. Moreover, the Platform facilitates seamless collaboration across teams and departments, ensuring a cohesive approach to resolving customer requests.

Sunderland City Council's enhancement of its Community Chest process demonstrates the transformative impact of GOSS Case Management in the public sector. The Community Chest initiative serves as a vital funding opportunity for eligible community groups and organisations seeking financial support for their projects. Leveraging GOSS Case Management, the Council introduced a streamlined digital process for submitting Community Chest applications, revolutionising the workflow for the Sunderland team while simultaneously providing applicants with real-time visibility into the status of their submissions. This innovative approach has not only improved efficiency within the Council, but has also enhanced transparency and accessibility for applicants, ultimately facilitating a more seamless and user-friendly experience for all involved parties.

The improved Community Chest funding application process is much more efficient for both the applicant and administrator. Feedback from voluntary and community sector groups has been very complimentary in relation to how easy it is to use.

Louise Preece - Area Support Lead
Sunderland City Council 

Seamless Integration with Existing Systems

Integration capabilities are pivotal for ensuring end-to-end service delivery. The GOSS Digital Platform seamlessly integrates with a range third-party and legacy systems, enhancing and streamlining online service provision. Whether through out-of-the-box integrations or custom-built solutions, organisations can tailor the Platform to meet specific service requirements.

West Berkshire Council's forward-thinking approach to incorporating AI-driven solutions highlights the dynamic capabilities of the GOSS Digital Platform in seamlessly integrating with existing systems. Recognising AI's increasing relevance in the public sector, the Council strategically deployed AI to optimise internal processes and citizen services, addressing efficiency challenges amidst resource constraints. Leveraging the GOSS Digital Platform's robust integration capabilities, the Council seamlessly bridged AI, particularly ChatGPT Enterprise, to safeguard citizen data while revolutionising operational workflows. This integration facilitated automation in recruitment content, redaction of sensitive data, readability adjustments, and automated case management, resulting in significant time and cost savings. The successful amalgamation of GOSS and ChatGPT not only streamlined operations but has also paved the way for future digital transformations in the public sector, outlining the Platform's ability to seamlessly integrate with diverse systems to drive efficiency, security, and impactful innovation.

We have been impressed with the ease of integrating GOSS iCM with other tools and platforms. The API and integration tools provided are well documented and intuitive, making the integration process simple and straightforward. We have been able to integrate many of our existing systems for highways, waste management and council tax (AMX, Bartec Collective & Northgate) to name a few, streamlining our workflow and improving our overall efficiency. The SharePoint worker has also been useful for depositing information into lists for our staff to action/review.

ICT Developer/Integrator
Powys County Council 

In conclusion, the GOSS Digital Platform emerges as a catalyst for public sector digital evolution. By empowering organisations to digitise services, streamline operations, and enhance user experiences, it paves the way for a more efficient, customer-centric government. As public sector entities navigate the complexities of the digital landscape, the GOSS Digital Platform stands as a beacon of innovation and progress, driving sustainable digital transformation for the benefit of citizens and stakeholders alike.

The GOSS Digital Platform has given us the ability to quickly deploy incredibly important services to our customers and residents.

Neil Wood - Web Developer
Breckland Council