{"id":2857,"date":"2017-11-29T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/industry\/blog\/uncategorized\/opencities-and-azure-help-grand-rapids-become-a-digital-city\/"},"modified":"2023-05-31T16:36:06","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T23:36:06","slug":"opencities-and-azure-help-grand-rapids-become-a-digital-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/industry\/blog\/government\/2017\/11\/29\/opencities-and-azure-help-grand-rapids-become-a-digital-city\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenCities and Azure help Grand Rapids become a digital city"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m always happy to hear about efforts to engage citizens, especially in smaller to mid-size cities<\/a>. That\u2019s why I was especially pleased to learn about Grand Rapids\u2019 recent success in delivering innovative digital services, answering public questions and helping citizens get things done in a new online city hall that\u2019s open 24\/7.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Making it easy to obtain city services<\/h2>\n

\"\"The second-largest city in Michigan met with our Microsoft CityNext<\/a> partner OpenCities<\/a> in late 2016 about developing a new website that would make it easy\u2014and less costly\u2014for citizens to obtain services, such as water, garbage and recycling as well as obtain various permits and complete other city transactions. \u201cA phone call is the most expensive interaction a government can have with a person,\u201d said Becky Jo Glover, director of Customer Service for the City of Grand Rapids<\/a>. \u201cWhen they\u2019re on the Internet, it\u2019s a very small amount of charge but, if they can\u2019t find it, what happens: they call, they walk in. We would ask people, \u2018Did you check the website before you called here?\u2019 And they would say, \u2018Yes, but I couldn\u2019t find it.\u2019 And that was about 75 percent of every call we received.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Enter OpenCities\u2019 Cynthia Francis and Jack Madans. They found the Grand Rapids\u2019 website typical of most government sites: \u201cThey\u2019re hard to navigate, they\u2019re filled with a lot of great information that isn\u2019t curated in a way that makes sense to average people, they\u2019re written in what I would call \u2018government-speak\u2019 (which) the average person has trouble understanding,\u201d Francis said. \u201cWhat they really got excited about was the opportunity to turn their website into a digital services portal and \u2026 just make it extremely simple to do business with the City of Grand Rapids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Impressive result<\/h2>\n

Built on the Microsoft Azure Government<\/a> cloud platform, the new OpenCities website for Grand Rapids is already producing impressive results, which Glover notes in a recent video case study<\/a>: \u201cWe used to have 120,000 calls and walk-ins to our center on an annual basis for just starting refuse and turning water on,\u201d Glover said. \u201cIn less than 11 weeks, we have a 79-percent reduction<\/strong> in walk-ins for turning water on.\u201d With more than 89 city services available on its new site, Grand Rapids also has converted half of its 80,000 walk-up payments to online transactions.<\/p>\n

In addition to empowering the 180,000 residents of Grand Rapids to conveniently complete city business at any time and on any device, the new digital portal is improving customer service, providing city staff with better intra-department visibility and garnering positive attention. For example, Grand Rapids:<\/p>\n