Civica enables North Lanarkshire Council to offer a Citizen Portal with SSO – Single sign on

As documented in this Civica case study North Lanarkshire Council implemented their ‘Multivue‘ solution to achieved a ‘golden record’ of each citizen giving them the ability to access all the services they need through only one login.

In their Digital Roadmap the council describe their ambitions and vision for moving to a Digital delivery model, including key objectives such as:

We aim to empower and activate customers to be self-managing, direct them to the right resources, and anticipate their needs. This will make North Lanarkshire an attractive place to live, work and do business, both improving outcomes for residents and fostering economic growth.

and the case study documents the type of challenge they needed to overcome to realize this goal:

The Citizen Portal is an online service in which citizens of North Lanarkshire can sign in to access a variety of tasks and services, from having a pet microchipped to learning the recycling schedule in their neighborhood, to arranging repairs on their home or accessing council data.

Prior to the Citizen Portal going live in March 2017, there was a very disconnected online presence. Citizens had the ability to conduct their business online, but tasks were disjointed and difficult to find or access, and often required that they sign in multiple times to access various departments and services.

As they highlight in the Roadmap, a new digital platform was needed to address these types of issues:

We will reduce the cost base through the removal of duplication and fragmentation through consolidation of common activity/processes. Data and digital are key enablers to this model of service delivery. They provide access for our customers as well as the evidence base to change our services and respond to need on an ongoing basis. This will increase customers’ use of self-support whilst allowing us to target our resources at those with greatest need.

To turn this into reality requires an improved IT architecture. This means a new digital platform on which we build the new technology and ways of working.

The transformation outcomes included:

• Improved user experience and simplified process for the citizen
• Single sign-in and integration with mygov.scot online account
• One ‘golden record’ for each citizen
• Tangible cost savings and efficient service delivery
• Used MDM solution to increase complete and accurate data records from 7,000 customers to 86,000

Roadmap : MDM-based Single Signon

The Civica solution defines ‘MDM’ (Master Data Management) as a keystone foundation to this new digital platform.

The MDM system sits at the heart of the Portal, creating one “golden record” of each citizen, generated from the disparate information in the separate systems. The effect is that now, when the citizen logs on, that information can be called forth only one time, instantly. This gives the citizen access to all the services they need, through only one login.

It’s a common requirement for all government agencies operating multiple business systems storing citizen data.

The Aberdeen Digital Transformation Blueprint describes a plan to implement a ‘My Account’ feature for users, that simplifies and streamlines services for them across the 400+ different applications that Aberdeen operates, and in this document define their business case for their own investment into an MDM capability.

Their Digital Plan lists a number of specific objectives towards this goal:

• 1. Our Staff will spend less time inputting and updating information in systems as we join them up so they do it automatically.
  2. Our Staff will have the right information to help customers, as we improve the way we share and join up our data.
  3. Use our data to identify you so that you do not need to provide the same data many times.
  4. Hold one set of customer information across all key systems.
  5. Implement a single account for external customers.
  6. Introduce a Single and staff account to allow for the federation of core systems with other organizations such as Aberdeenshire Council and the NHS.

A critical point to highlight is that these are common requirements across all Scottish authorities.

For example in their roadmap plans East Ayrshire describes “Unified Customer Accounts / Single-View – Wherever possible, services will be provided that allow a single ID to enable a consistent unified view of the customer”, and similarly Dundee City Council describe the same functionality requirements in their roadmap:

“Delivering on online customer portal and working towards creating a single identity for our citizens to make requesting services simpler, all linked through our citizen account, MyDundee.”