CASE STUDY
City of Medicine Hat sets new expectations for citizen services
The mission was to develop a local government digital platform and application to improve city services for citizens to meet today’s modern demands. Here's how they did it.
Challenge
To be agile in this digital economy while keeping a citizen-first mindset, the City of Medicine Hat was in search of a digital solution that would stabilize and enhance their customer service while reducing their organizations’ net costs.
Considering the demands of their citizens, the City sought a dynamic website and mobile application to make city services accessible to citizens anywhere, at any time.
Our response
Ready for the challenge, the City of Medicine Hat partnered with us to satisfy their needs of a website redesign and application development. Our team addressed the needs of the City through consultation with staff and a Technical Needs Assessment to ensure that timelines and outcomes were aligned.
With close collaboration and pure hustle, we launched medicinehat.ca and myMH Portal at their six-month deadline. To prepare City staff to manage and upload content, we provided writing for the web training to encourage best practices for clear and accessible language.
Improved user experience
The City also received additional website tools to improve users’ overall experience:
- To support user-friendly user search, we added A-Z Services, “How do I” Menu, Contact Directory, Cludo Site Search, and a Parks and Facilities module that allows users to dynamically search through a map to find their service.
- To gather information efficiently from citizens, the website includes Form Builder and Report a Problem modules.
- We addressed the City’s desire to increase connection with citizens by integrating a News and Alerts Manager and Programs and Events Calendar so citizens can subscribe and access information when they need it.
myMH Portal
Created for smart cities, we provided the City with a “myMH” citizen portal that is seamlessly integrated within the City’s website. The myMH Portal allows citizens to add city service widgets to their dashboard to satisfy their needs. Users can find events in their area and subscribe to news and notices to stay in the loop.
The impact
With two new digital platforms, the City can bring their city services together on a platform that was easy to update, timely to navigate information and more responsive to citizens demands.
With an efficient and cost-saving application, the City can reduce citizen questions and cut mundane, repetitive tasks out of the process.
With online payment functions that are compatible with multiple methods and a smart notification system that allows users to choose their alerts based on their interests, the myMH Portal is equipped to be personalized to each citizen who uses it. Plus, staff can manage requests and make changes without sacrificing delays or service downtimes.
“The myMH portal is really our dashboard into all our online services that we are providing here at the city” – Craig Fruin, Project Manager, City of Medicine Hat.
This portal provides the sleek, seamless connection to the City’s new website created on our robust content management system, allowing the City to operate services the same across every interaction and delivery channel.
The content management system upgraded the City’s website into a platform that allows staff to build each department and section into a robust, interactive knowledge base. With a variety of layout options, staff created landing pages for all their main verticals to engage users and support their navigation.
Accordion functions and "How-To" features help walk users through processes and information in bite-sizes to avoid overwhelming visitors with content. Button and emphasis styles are also used throughout their content to draw the eye to key information or action items. This way, City staff can ensure important notices and functions of the site are clear and understandable.
Overall, the City of Medicine Hat exceeded their citizens’ expectations with a new digital platform offering that will engage City and citizen together for a stronger, more forward-thinking community.