Public Sector Network’s IT & Innovation Roadshow Recap: Creating Digital Experiences That Compel Residents

Governments worldwide are investing in technology that improves the resident experience while reducing the stress on their employees, and the public sector in Canada is no exception. Public Sector Network (PSN) organized a multi-city roadshow that brought together public sector professionals to discuss IT strategies and technologies that increase productivity while also improving resident experience. 

From March 1 – 16, 2023, PSN hosted events in Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Victoria, bringing together hundreds of government leaders with a focus on IT procurement, operations, and management. 

PayIt was proud to participate in the Toronto and Victoria events, educating these leaders on topics such as using digital technologies and the cloud to improve resident experience and government efficiency.

Toronto, ON | Tuesday, March 7, 2023

The Toronto leg of the roadshow drew the largest audience, featuring speakers from the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery, the Ministry of the Solicitor General, Government of Ontario, the Regional Municipality of Durham, and more. Topics included IT culture in government, how to design a roadmap for government digital transformation, and the benefits of a cloud-based infrastructure.

Our very own Senior Vice President of Operations, Jean Nobile, took the stage for a keynote address in which she walked the audience through a digital-first approach to creating positive resident experiences with government. Jean has worked with municipalities across North America to revitalize and transform how they reach their residents, and presented the key takeaways she’s uncovered through these experiences.

Many of our partners have not had the resources to uplift their legacy processes and technologies, Jean explained, and therefore have sought out a digital partner that can integrate with their back office systems. This integration enables agencies to not only serve their constituents in modern ways, but also to streamline their back office processes–including reconciliation. And because PayIt actually receives the payments, we’ve removed the Payment Card Industry compliance burden from the agencies. 

These benefits were, of course, of value to the audience at PSN Toronto — but their natural next question was, “how can my agency go about efficiently and effectively realizing these results?”

The 3 needle-movers to quickly and effectively adopting new technology

Jean spent a majority of her presentation sharing the three needle-movers that by prioritizing, we’ve seen a high level of success in implementation and adoption of new technologies. 

1. Any digitization process should first place significance on creating a resident-centric experience. A straightforward and accessible experience enables residents to be increasingly self-sufficient, resulting in less support needed from agency employees and quicker collection of revenue. It’s a win-win; make the residents’ lives easier, make the agency employee’s job easier.
2. The second critical piece, Jean noted, is to tackle the front end independently from the back end. Most government agencies don’t have the resources to overhaul their back-office systems, but there are vendors in the private sector that are solely focused on developing frontend technologies that are designed specifically to integrate with and bridge together a government’s back-office systems. Starting there allows a quick and impactful improvement of the resident experience.
3. Once your digital experience is ready to be rolled out to residents, a challenge (or opportunity, depending on how you look at it) is driving resident adoption. In order to effectively introduce your new offering to residents, governments need to lay out a communication plan with the goal of driving adoption. A side effect, as Jean expressed, is the opportunity to show off the new technology and reaffirm your government’s commitment to delivering choices to residents in the digital age.

Toronto, meet Toronto

Jean closed out her presentation with a real-world example of the process she lined out — and it hit close to home for the Toronto PSN roadshow audience. The City of Toronto serves as a shining example of adopting PayIt’s technology to introduce a new offering to its residents, called MyTorontoPay.

By focusing on a resident-centric experience, modernizing the front end independently from the back end, and deploying a structured communication strategy around MyTorontoPay, the City successfully rolled out its new offering — and has since added additional services seamlessly and effectively.

Victoria, BC | Thursday, March 16, 2023

The PSN IT & Innovation roadshow ended its journey in Victoria, where speakers from the Government of British Columbia, the City of Victoria, Royal Roads University, and more covered topics spanning cloud and IT infrastructure to automating customer experience processes and beyond.

PayIt’s Joe Karras joined a panel of experts discussing how to transform the resident experience leveraging cloud-native technologies.

The ins and outs of cloud adoption

In his panel, Joe and the panelists walked the audience through how to create a checklist for success when implementing a cloud-based technology, including the key factors and action items to help governments prepare. This includes ensuring any technology an agency uses is built on a government-grade cloud platform that prioritizes security and compliance with with FedRAMP High, DoD Security Requirements Guide, Impact Level 5, CJIS, and more.

Migrating to a cloud-based infrastructure is a process, the panelists all agreed. It’s critical to leverage experimentation throughout the adoption, allowing agencies to learn from what’s working, and alternately, what’s not. 

What the process doesn’t have to be, Joe emphasized, is unnecessarily risky. By identifying a solution that’s built on a government-grade cloud platform, agencies can mitigate risks and disruptions, including downtime during the migration, data protection, and loss recovery processes. It’s important for decision makers to ask the right questions of any vendor they are considering working with.

Governments are dealing with sensitive resident data, including payment and demographic information. So security is of the utmost importance to agencies as they migrate to the cloud. Leveraging cloud services built specifically for government use is the best way to ensure security and compliance is always on, ready, and up-to-date with the latest policy changes and cyberattack techniques.

The next frontier in Canada: digital resident experiences

The PSN IT & Innovation Roadshow delivered a swath of insights and information around modernizing government-resident interactions, and the engaged attendees made one thing clear: innovation is not a far-off dream, but an immediate priority. We’re looking forward to serving as a partner with Canada’s municipalities and provinces as they embark on their digital transformation journey.