Better Reporting, Better Local Services
How might we improve communication and reporting systems to make residents feel heard while increasing internal efficiencies and impact in responding to public reports?
Every day, residents across the county use online platforms to report issues on their local services. Designed to improve services more efficiently, reporting platforms can become an operational challenge for organisations actively trying to implement solutions. Teams are spending significant time and resources managing inefficient reporting rather than delivering the necessary improvement.
As a result, people feel unheard, and satisfaction scores are low; staff feel unseen and undervalued. This increases complexity in the communication between users and service providers, leading to further frustration on both sides.
This sprint asks: what would a smarter, more efficient system and communication look like, one that improves operational efficiency and still treats every resident with care and attention?
In this fast-paced, one-day collaborative workshop, participants will:
- Walk through the current reporting experience from a resident's and organisational perspective, identifying the moments that frustrate, confuse, or let people down
- Discuss approaches from across public services such as water, energy, waste, policing, street maintenance, and learn what works and doesn’t work.
- Identify quick wins and longer-term opportunities to streamline how public reporting is received, triaged, and closed
- Explore what good looks like: the right information, at the right time, for the right person
- Co-design ideas that improve the experience for residents whilst making life easier for the teams who serve them
The day will include a series of collaborative and insight-led sessions:
- Journey Mapping: Mapping the users’ experience end-to-end, from spotting a problem to seeing it fixed, and identifying where trust breaks down.
- Root Cause Analysis: Exploring the real reasons behind repeat reporting: what are residents trying to achieve, and what does the current system fail to provide?
- Cross-Sector Learning: Drawing on experience from water, energy, waste, policing, and other public services to explore what “good” looks like in practice and how it improved resident trust.
- Design Sprint Activities: Developing practical ideas for better messaging, smarter notifications, and more human ways of keeping residents in the loop through development and improvement of technologies for smarter workflows and more efficient use of resources.
- Synthesis & Priorities: Bringing both lenses together to identify the ideas with the greatest combined impact, better for residents and better for teams.
- A clear picture of where and why the current reporting experience falls short
- A set of practical ideas for improving communication at every stage of the journey
- Recommendations for data, technology, or process changes that could be implemented in the short and medium term
- A shortlist of priority areas for improvements to take forward as pilots or innovation project
- New connections across sectors, bringing fresh perspectives to a shared challenge
- Communities, Citizens and Service Users: Direct discussion with your service providers and contributions to the improvement of your local services.
- Customer experience & communications teams: Practical ideas for redesigning public-facing communications and improving satisfaction scores
- Council officers & operational teams: A clearer understanding of how residents experience the reporting process, and what creates frustration
- Digital, data & platform teams: Insights to inform improvements to online reporting tools and notification systems
- Service managers & planners: A clearer picture of demand patterns and a set of proposals to improve resource allocation
- Organisations receiving public reporting: Shared learning from highway maintenance, water, energy, waste, policing, and other services facing similar challenges
- Innovation & strategy teams: Fresh thinking on how to improve trust and transparency in public service delivery