Vital Coronavirus services added to GOSS Community Library

With the Coronavirus lockdown now in full swing, many councils across the UK are looking to ensure their communities are supported during this period. In order to manage the increase in demand and ease pressure on local government citizen services, we have added several new digital services to the GOSS Community Library. Furthermore, members of the GOSS community have also built and kindly donated services which are now available to be used by other GOSS users.

All digital services located in the GOSS Community Library, which also includes the building blocks used to create an array of digital services such as web forms, business processes and integrations, have been designed to help local councils' communities assist and support each other. Taking the current Coronavirus lockdown into consideration, new digital services have been added to the library which help local authorities identify and support vulnerable isolated individuals, plus enable individuals to volunteer their time to help.

The first of these two services is aimed at those individuals who require essential support during the Coronavirus outbreak. With this service, citizens in need of help can use it to request assistance with purchasing food and prescriptions, paying utility bills or even request frequent contact from somebody. The services are set up, to be used by customers online via their local authority's website, or by local authority staff assisting users over the telephone. Using this service automatically assigns cases to staff based on locations, enabling rapid deployment of food parcels or medication where required.

The second service provides individuals in local authority communities with the ability to register their interest in volunteering to help people in their community who are most at risk from Coronavirus. By using this service, individuals can offer their time to help with certain tasks such as: checking in with isolated individuals over the phone, run shopping and other errands, or even volunteer to help with key council services during staff shortages.

Throughout this difficult time, these new digital services are helping to provide a lifeline for so many isolated individuals across the UK. Presenting a modern approach to tackling the ramifications of the Coronavirus outbreak, these new services provide a very quick but effective way in which to deliver ongoing support to communities, whilst also delivering it in a way which doesn't overwhelm services and staff.

All new digital services and building blocks are now available within the GOSS Community Library and accessible to GOSS users. We have also added to the library new dashboards to track the requests received through these new Coronavirus service. Discover how these dashboards work our other blog post. 

Users are also welcome to add services and assets to the library, or even enhance existing ones to ensure the GOSS Community is supported not only throughout this challenging time, but also into the future to ensure the improvement of digital services for all!