Canterbury City Council

Outcome of Expression of Interest: Not shortlisted

Following a substantial discovery project into the needs of offstreet parking customers, the Council took the decision to review its legacy parking infrastructure to create a digitally-enabled system that could meet defined customer needs.  

Following procurement in early 2018, the Council is working with its new supplier to develop an open, adjustable system that completely meets the requirements of all our customer personas, but is agile enough to adjust to changing needs.  The Council and supplier are already working with neighbouring Councils to roll this model out further.

To further the projects successful implementation, the council now wishes to deliver a programme of customer engagement and change initiatives that encourage digital uptake and self serve of these solutions, developed through further insight and delivered through nudge and behaviour change techniques.

Through the insight and engagement work, and by implementing the new initiatives, the Council will develop and publish its toolkit that will enable other Councils to successfully engage, and change the behaviours of, customers in using digital-channels in traditionally non-digital services post implementation.

We will work with a neighbouring council that is deploying the same system to ensure the model and toolkit works across different districts, demographics and customer types.

Discovery evidence

Canterbury City Council wanted to change the way it delivered parking services.  Local Government parking systems and facilities tend to be managed and delivered in a very traditional, operationally-focussed environment; Councillors wanted to investigate introducing cutting-edge, digitally-enabled parking solutions, creating better customer journey whilst reducing costs.  Following a pilot of ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) in four car parks, the council took the decision to review and engage with users and non-users.

The council’s digital transformation team led this discovery project, as the new operational model would focus on software rather than hardware to create a customer journey that would be completely end to end digital.

In 2017 the council undertook substantial customer insight into parking habits to understand the solution the council would need to procure.  A summary of that extensive insight, with c.2000 customers, is attached.

Following the insight study the council wanted to undertake market research with suppliers to understand what could be delivered, and how this could meet the needs of our customers – built around our four customer personas.

Following the soft market testing a full OEJU procurement was undertaken, with meeting the needs of these four customer groups at its heart.

  • Introduction to user research

Other training requests

As well as the above, this projects focus is on a post-implementation customer behaviour change. Whilst the digital team can utilise techniques such as nudge techniques, further training/support would be welcome to ensure the alpha project can deliver a fully rounded result.