Category: Government

City of Darebin

The background

Delivering a range of services to one of the largest and most diverse communities in Victoria, Darebin City Council has made a commitment to better engagement through online services and digital footprint. The suite of digital tools has been prioritised as the platform to create highly engaging and visible experiences for a truly connected community.

The challenge

Citizens need to feel like they belong in Darebin and be confident to engage with the Council. The expectations of connected experiences have changed the way councils need to operate – the challenge is how to blend organisational structure with the needs of the community to deliver services seamlessly to citizens where they are looking. Darebin City Council wanted to centralise the delivery platform of their brand websites while promoting relevant services that were not obviously available.

The solution

Darebin and NOW Digital stepped into the shoes of the community to understand their wants and translate them into needs. As a blended team, we defined what it means to deal with your local council and removed the barriers stopping citizens from discovering exactly how big a part their local council plays in their daily lives.

Prototyping smarter digital experiences, tailored to the needs of the community.

The goal is to bring the needs of a diverse set of stakeholders to create a shared vision on how to deliver council services to the community. The discovery phase produced interactive prototyping of the experience Darebin is delivering to the community – a tangible, engaging, and clear feasibility of the solution.

Centralised digital experience platform to manage council services

Harnessing the power of the digital experience can only truly be realised in a connected state. We needed a deeper understanding of the requirements of each Council brand and ensure adequate representation in the solution. While striving for a centralised management solution and reusable components, we also wanted to ensure that each Council brand had an identity and voice of its own.

Tracking progress and increasing citizen engagement

Empowering Darebin to own the engagement from initial interaction through to advocacy means that the problems that are solved are the problems that are important to the community. With progress comes confidence and the willingness to ‘get involved’ and builds the continuous improvement culture that underpins the strategic direction of Darebin Council.

Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency

Ahpra enlisted NOW Digital to perform a Proof of Concept and upgrade to the legacy Sitecore XP environment. Following a smooth transition to the latest version, Ahpra then migrated ongoing support services to NOW Digital.

Together Ahpra and NOW Digital are developing a strategy to design and deliver the next phase of digital communication and seamless user experience to Ahpra’s direct health customers and the broader community.

Services Australia

Showcasing the digital state

Working in conjunction with managing strategic partners Royce Comm, NOW Digital executed a digital presentation to significant government ministers and stakeholders to showcase present and future-state scenarios for Services Australia (formerly the Department of Human Services).

Now delivered interfaces for digital touchscreens, kiosks and videos.

Solar Victoria

Leveraging the Single Digital Platform (SDP)

NOW Digital was proud to partner with Solar Victoria to deliver on this program that helps Victorians take control of their energy bills, tackle climate change and provide a cleaner, better future for all. The Drupal solution utilised the Victorian government’s Single Digital Presence (SDP) platform (an open, flexible technical solution that provides value to the organisation).

Victorian Managed Insurance Authority

Migration and immediate improvement

The Victorian Managed Insurance Authority (VMIA) enlisted NOW Digital to perform a technology audit of a previous web development upon Sitecore CMS. VMIA subsequently migrated all ongoing services to NOW Digital, including a refactoring project to re-architect the Sitecore integration to improve CMS administration and front end functionality.

Ongoing integration and improvement

After successfully completing the technology audit and migration of services, NOW Digital is currently assisting VMIA in longer term functionality improvements, including implementing a responsive framework as well as a new portal development and increased backend system integration.

VicSuper Calculator

To support this initiative VicSuper asked NOW Digital to design and develop a microsite that includes a set of online tools starting with a simple online retirement calculator, to assist and engage the user as well as explaining the two newly launched superannuation products. The tool could be viewed as a small and simple set of achievable goals, creating an impression of evolving rather than consistent and unchanged.

Australian Maritime Museum

Australian National Maritime Museum - NOW Digital

A new major integration project currently underway involves brining the 50,000+ artefacts the museum has in its overall collection from their backend asset management system, allowing the public access to the full collection 24/7.

Utilising the Microsoft Azure platform offered NOW Digital a secure and flexible development, deployment, and scaling option for any sized web application for Australian National Maritime Museum’s current and future requirements.

VicTrack

Through a competitive tender process, VicTrack recently selected NOW Digital to re-design and re-develop their website on the Sitecore Experience Platform.

A key requirement of the project was to ensure WCAG2 compliance. The result is a clean and modern interface in-line with the Victoria Government master-brand, featuring bold imagery with simple, intuitive navigation.As a provider of core services to the transport sector and asset manager, VicTrack fulfil various roles and functions to ensure the state’s assets continue to serve Victoria now and into the future.

Consumer Affairs Victoria

Consumer Affairs Victoria recently contracted NOW Digital to undertake a full rebranding and UX re-architecture of their website, the primary goal being to deliver a more user-friendly, device-friendly and intuitive way to find information quickly.

Prototyping delivers results

NOW organised and conducted extensive prototyping and user testing with members of the general public to validate Consumer Affairs Victoria’s new website design. Innovative menu structures designed to operate across multiple devices and context-sensitive breadcrumbs were key features targeted, allowing key learnings to be applied back into artwork early in the project and help deliver the best possible user experience.

Full WCAG 2.0 AA compliance

NOW delivered a modern, fully-responsive user interface while maintaining full WCAG 2.0 AA compliance across multiple audits by independent accessibility consulting firms. The website uses innovative menu behaviours, validated through extensive user testing and prototyping, and responsive layouts to deliver a ground-breaking user experience across all devices, while leveraging integration with ReadSpeaker and SoundCloud to provide assistive technology support and provide a truly accessible experience to Victorian consumers.

Yarra City Council

City of Yarra - Digital Transformation on Sitecore Experience Platform by NOW Digital

NOW Digital was tasked with performing a full-scale multi-site redevelopment on Sitecore XP and hosted on Microsoft Azure, with a key driver being updating the site look-and-feel and delivering complex integration requirements in seamless, user-friendly manner. Through an Agile delivery process, the re-platforming project was delivered early, on budget.

A modern digital experience

Yarra City Council engaged NOW to lead the delivery of a new, integrated digital experience platform using Sitecore XP, a platform providing a seamless transition between Council’s many supporting systems and technologies and delivering its content authors the power and flexibility to create rich, modern, attractive, responsive and fully WCAG-compliant websites with ease.

Azure cloud delivery

Yarra City Council’s new platform was designed from the ground up for hosting in the Azure cloud architecture using an IaaS model with SQL Azure. Fully automated continuous integration and automated deployment processes were established by NOW and in place from day one, providing a best-practice development and delivery model that leverages the major benefits of the cloud, including DR and the ability to scale and load/geo-balance, while minimising cost.