SocietyWorks in 2021

We really do think that society works. When people come together to improve their communities, making them welcoming, vibrant and resilient places to live, then everybody benefits.

I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve started to build here at SocietyWorks – the amazing team we’ve brought together, to support the work of local councils, improving the ability of staff and contractors to deliver critically important services to hundreds of thousands of citizens each day.

As you’ll see from this review of the year, 2021 has been all about expanding the scope of our service suite, rolling out dozens of new features and services to new communities around the UK – and doing so with beautiful, simple and effective design.

What I’ve enjoyed most this year is when we’ve been able to bring our council partners together, albeit online of course, to help us shape and plan where we should focus our efforts for the years ahead. We hope many more councils will be able to join these discussions through 2022, and I’m excited about the difference we can make together.

Enjoy our review of SocietyWorks’ year!

In 2021, I’ve seen more clearly than ever the impact that SocietyWorks has on communities, building digital tools and services that increase efficiency, give better insight and focus for the key issues tackled by councils and help citizens have a clearer and louder voice.

In that spirit, it was my privilege to be asked to temporarily step into the role of Chair of SocietyWorks for a portion of 2021. I am sorry that we are saying goodbye to Jonathan Flowers, our chair for the past six years. I would like to recognise Jonathan’s deep expertise of local government and corporate life, which was instrumental in helping to drive the company’s growth over the past six years. Anybody who has met Jonathan recognises that his passion and good humour are infectious, his intellect sharp, and his ethics unwavering. We will all miss the marvellous combination of his talents.

I’d like to extend a second fond farewell to Anno Mitchell, who also left the Board this year. Thank you, Anno, for your five years’ service – you are already very missed.

Finally, please let me say how proud I am of the entire SocietyWorks team – the Board, the staff, the contractors. Your hard work, your ideas and your engagement with our clients across the country enables us to do amazing things for society. 2021 has been a great year to be involved – thank you, all.

WasteWorks

Designed in consultation with Bromley Council, WasteWorks is our intelligent, citizen-centred frontend service for local authorities that integrates with in-cab systems to simplify access to and management of domestic, bulky and green waste service requests online.

“WasteWorks builds on the previous online reporting we had within our Waste Services area, offering our residents a level of self-service for our Green Garden Waste subscriptions which has been a long-held ambition. The ability to adjust and tweak customer messaging and templates through the administration area allows us to respond quickly and keep the customers informed as we take them through the process, which helps us drive down those avoidable contacts and queries.”

Jim Cowan, Waste Services Contract Manager at Bromley Council

NoiseWorks

This year we’ve been working with Hackney Council on a secure, purpose-built digital solution for taking and managing noise reports from citizens, all developed in consultation with noise officers and influenced by user research into what Hackney residents want from this sort of service.

With the majority of residents surveyed indicating they would rather not have to download an app to report a noise issue, NoiseWorks is a responsive web-based service that will make it easier not just for citizens to make a report, but also for the council to keep report-makers informed on the progress of their cases, helping to close the feedback loop and improve satisfaction.

This has been a hugely enjoyable project, taking part in a service assessment and moving at pace from Alpha to Beta.

Phase one of NoiseWorks launched in early 2021, with a full case management system coming soon.

Joining the dots

One visual heatmap for tracking all of your highways and waste service areas via FixMyStreet Pro and WasteWorks.

That’s confidential

Easily redact areas of images uploaded by citizens using FixMyStreet Pro’s new moderation tool instead of needing to hide or remove them completely.

Already on it

Display scheduled maintenance works via special map pins on FixMyStreet to remove the need for citizens to report problems that are already on your radar.

All fingers and thumbs

A more touch-friendly, app-like design to the FixMyStreet website, with a more responsive category picker and better map controls.

“It’s always a pleasure working with SocietyWorks. They have a robust understanding of both the citizen and the local authority’s needs and take a very collaborative approach to product development.”

Jason Dalby, ICT Project Manager, Peterborough City Council

In addition to designing new services for local authorities and the public sector, our agile approach to service development, coupled with our unstinting focus on user-centred design means that we’re increasingly asked by our clients to help redesign existing service areas – this is where both WasteWorks (with Bromley) and NoiseWorks (with Hackney) originated.

Here are some of the projects we’ve worked on over the past 12 months…

West Sussex County Council

Tasked with exploring how West Sussex could improve its online reporting tool for highways defects such as potholes and blocked drains, we carried out an in-depth Discovery project, encompassing interviews with residents, officers and councillors, as well as reviewing the council’s existing processes and software to identify where efficiencies could be made. At the end of the project we delivered a comprehensive report of findings and professional recommendations to the council for them to take away and act upon.

NHS – Department of Health and Social Care

An Alpha phase project intended to scope out and prototype a new reporting service for faults in hospitals that would make it easier for NHS staff to track and follow up on reports. Bringing our expertise in developing user-centred and transparent services, our service design team got to work researching, prototyping and refining this new service, before preparing for an Alpha assessment.

Shropshire Council

Determined to incorporate resident requirements into their plans for transforming the way potholes and other highways issues are reported and dealt with, Shropshire Council’s Highways team commissioned us with the responsibility for completing a Discovery of their working processes and software – analysing their existing digital set-up and speaking to citizens, councillors and staff members to collect the most relevant information that would inform the features and functionality of the new service.

With the recent addition of Service Designer Bekki Leaver to the SocietyWorks team, we’re excited to get stuck into some more design and discovery projects over the next 12 months. First on the cards, Bekki will be applying her breadth of user-centred design experience to our fledgling ApplyWorks service: a hassle-free way to handle applications for everything from white bar markings to dropped kerbs.

Red routes

We co-hosted a workshop with TfL for our London-based FixMyStreet Pro customers, all about how to get the most out of the service’s intelligent routing functionality.

User groups

From Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight, we brought our council community together to share best practice and plan for the future.

A clear way forward

Bromley Council took part in our webinar all about the best way to get started when designing or refining a service for citizens.

And more…

It’s been a thrill to participate in a number of brilliant online and in-person events and conferences this year, including the LGA Annual Conference, the District Councils’ Network Annual Conference, Highways UK, Service Design in Gov and RWM.

Word on the street

We’ve been collaborating with our colleagues over on mySociety’s Research team to understand the latest needs and wants from citizens when it comes to reporting problems to councils and other public authorities. Starting early next year, we’ll be publishing this research annually to help you stay alert to ever-changing citizen requirements. Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know when the research is available.

Strengthening the foundations

If you’ve been keeping an eye on our blog recently, you’ll have seen that we’re currently making some upgrades to our infrastructure platform which will enable us to provide more flexible capacity and geographical redundancy for services. This work will continue into 2022 and will underpin the growth and availability of our services over the next three years.

In the driving seat

Councils have always influenced our development roadmap, and 2022 will be no different as we continue to accept suggestions from our clients and carry the most popular ones through to build. Take a look at the open roadmap to see what’s on the horizon.

Making connections

We’ve had the pleasure of working with so many brilliant teams over the years as we implement new service integrations, and with more and more of our clients telling us how well our services work with other systems and software, we’re keen to start looking at how we can work together to further improve the experience for our shared customers. Let us know if this is something you’d like to discuss.

We’re hiring!

If you like the look of what we get up to at SocietyWorks, perhaps you’d like to join us? In the new year we’ll be looking to bring on a Business Development Manager. Keep an eye on our careers page if you’re interested.