During the challenges of devastating bushfires, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic, we have helped Service NSW (SNSW) rapidly change and provide a first digital response to evolving crises and the community's immediate needs.
SNSW have made changes to provide users and administrators with a unified approach to exemplary customer service. Now, they are synonymous with digital growth and excellence and are constantly pivoting to meet customers’ needs wherever they are.
Highlights
- Ongoing support
- Discrete development projects
- Drupal upgrades
- Hosting on Skpr
- Real-time monitoring and reporting
- Streamlined look and feel
Deliverables
- Simplified, powerful content editor workflows and tools
- Richer and consistent user experiences
- Shareable global navigation
- Shareable design components
- Site stability during high traffic
- Constant digital evolution
Why These Deliverables?
The Service NSW model has seen an unprecedented level of success. More than 850 transactions have been added to the website since its initial launch. User expectations of the level of sophistication in their digital services have grown during this time, with the majority of usage moving to mobile.
The sheer volume of user sessions may seem like a problem, but not for the SNSW site. During the unprecedented spikes in traffic during bushfires, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic, we have supported SNSW to keep delivering a seamless and uninterrupted online service that can be accessed on the fly. This level of reliability has been vitally important for countless individuals and businesses throughout NSW.
Context
Following exponential growth in the uptake of its online services, Service NSW has expanded to more than 180 locations. Over 1,250 government transactions are now available via the website, which has served 397,831,549 million user sessions since it launched.
With the level of user demand for the SNSW site on a dramatic rise–alongside the appetite for digital solutions that create greater levels of convenience–how can SNSW keep pace whilst delivering a site that is consistent and reliable across all applications?
About the Client
Service NSW makes it easier for people and businesses across NSW to connect to government services and support, delivering world-class one-stop-shop access for customers, businesses and partner agencies.
Ongoing support and development
Having worked with Service NSW since its inception, we work on a retainer to support, maintain and enhance their platform–providing Drupal upgrades when relevant. We also undertake a range of additional projects.
Using an agile approach, we address a list of ongoing features in order of priority under a business as usual (BAU) services model. We then approach significant projects separately. Our relationship provides Service NSW with the consistency of a dedicated team that understands the intricacies of their platform, as well as a much-needed additional resource that can respond rapidly during times of crisis.
Cloud-based hosting
Service NSW keeps pace with their rapidly expanding website traffic by hosting their applications on our auto-scaling cloud hosting platform Skpr. This platform now serves over 100 million page views per month and is specifically designed to provide a reliable service, even during unprecedented high traffic periods.
The hosting platform also enables a staged rollout of features. These phases allow the team to fine-tune the application with real user interactions during the development phase and seamlessly go live when a feature is complete.
React Global Navigation: reusable design components
The SNSW website links users to other branded landing pages and transactions, creating the need for a consistent user experience across the board.
That’s why we replaced a legacy solution with React Global Navigation. React provides streamlined, unified branding across all products under the SNSW umbrella and a faster-to-market solution for new products from external teams. This convenient and speedy solution includes all the main navigation elements–the header and footer, search engine, and site-wide language translation. It facilitates fast content delivery when necessary, especially in response to crises.
Global Experience Language
To further the aim of a truly consistent user experience and a streamlined editorial experience, SNSW now uses a GEL or Global Experience Language product. This product is used across the organisation to implement all content presented to customers and stakeholders.
Every team can access universal examples of branding, editorial guidelines, design themes and code for components and learn how best to use them. Therefore, the GEL is vital in maintaining a consistent look and feel for additional applications and helps ease the editorial burden.
External Team API and Microcontent
Working hand in hand, the Microcontent and External Team API applications help to deliver more dynamic and rich content.
These solutions allow external teams to author smaller pieces of content through the Content Management System (CMS). Content can be pulled into their applications and viewed by everyone with access to the CMS. Teams can then develop and deploy new versions of the applications and target them to specific content.
This approach means SNSW can leverage their existing investment in Drupal to power editorial content for their web-based services. The Easy to do Business team has embraced this feature and is currently using it to power notifications in the My Business application.
Custom dashboards and analytics tracking
Custom dashboards are key in supporting SNSW’s critically important operations. Product and editorial teams have access to real-time data on infrastructure performance, scheduled publishing, and real-time user analytics insights.
Working to the needs of SNSW, we created a CMS dashboard for key content statistics, a performance dashboard for real-time monitoring of the application, and a notice message dashboard to create a seamless process for creating and managing outages and notices.
Each of these dashboards performs a vital function. The custom-built content dashboard provides visibility of content activity across the site, which is particularly useful to the editorial team. The Performance Dashboard allows SNSW to monitor interactions within the site and see who is using what data, as well as the site's general performance. The Service Status dashboard enables all teams to log outages and alert stakeholders and customers to outages or planned maintenance. Finally, the recent addition of the Customer Dashboard provides customers and stakeholders with a transparent view of how Service NSW performs across several key initiatives and programs.
The Results
Service NSW continues to serve and support the people and businesses of NSW with high-quality services, even during incredibly challenging times. This consistency requires the ability to respond rapidly at a moment’s notice. We have strongly reinforced their work with solid digital solutions, allowing them to meet their customers’ evolving needs.
The reputation of SNSW as a portal to vital services–daily and in emergencies–has grown. As both the customer-facing website and kiosk interface for users at service centres, the SNSW site can fulfil a vast number of transactions with reliability thanks to the hosting platform, Skpr.
Responding to how its customers prefer to access services and support, SNSW can provide the over 77% of users now accessing the site on mobile devices with an uncompromising level of digital excellence.
Through our ongoing relationship, we continue to support SNSW in improving its user experience by modernising its technical platform. Behind the scenes, they have achieved consistency by providing the flexibility for product teams to share design components, content and code guided by a universal source.
Moreover, our work together has created efficiencies to share with other government agencies. This aggregation is not only budget-conscious but also a great way to show users the joined-up nature of the services, support and information they rely on from the NSW Government.