AvePoint Citizen Services Powers Richmond's RVA 311 Citizen Request System
Success Highlights
Customer Location Richmond, Virginia
Industry Public Sector
Platform Dynamics 365
Richmond is
the capital city of Virginia with a population of 225,000. They have a rich
history of progressive technology adoption and are home to AvePoint’s
operational headquarters.
Critical Needs
- Modern citizen services technology
The Challenge
The expectations citizens have placed on their local governments have risen dramatically in the digital era as customer service technologies have made rapid advancements. Facing plunging levels of trust, agencies across the world must become more transparent and accountable while also achieving enlarged mission scopes with reduced budgets.
Richmond was an early adopter of smart city technology, however its existing citizen response system was essentially three different solutions by three separate vendors that maintained their systems independent of each other. At times, data was siloed, leaving no option to produce unified reports. It was also not shared externally with citizens and the feedback loop with the requestor was limited.
There was also no centralized channel to report problems or make requests of the city. Citizens would call the Richmond call center, their councilperson’s office, an agency directly, or they’d just send an email to someone they knew.
Once submitted, the application to indicate location also did not interact with ArcGIS, making it so that addresses could often not be found in the City’s system. This created an inefficient process where field and operations staff had to manually pinpoint requests to locations.
Richmond
Mayor Levar Stoney wanted the Richmond government to be more transparent and
responsive to citizens through technology.
Mayor, Richmond
The AvePoint Solution
AvePoint Citizen Service deploys Dynamics 365, advanced machine learning and IoT Microsoft technologies to gain context on common RVA 311 service requests such as abandoned vehicles, missing manhole covers or unruly tree branches. Users have the option to attach a photo. All requests that do not include private or personal information can be viewed in the public portal.
AvePointCitizen Services then routes it to the appropriate department or field worker without the need for human intervention. Once a request is filed, residents can track its status — unprocessed, assigned, in progress, on hold, or completed — through the website.
The platform
easily integrates into Richmond’s Cityworks implementation (without
complicating the citizen interface) through MicrosoftBizTalk which sends
inbound requests to the solution.
The Road Ahead
Data is no longer be siloed, the mapping integration is much improved, and Richmond government workers now have a single pane of glass for operations and reporting. Currently six city departments are providing information and services through the tool, with plans to add more government agencies over time.
The city is
excited about how the new data related to constituent needs can lead to more
efficient government, better allocation of resources and an overall higher
quality of life within the city.