Recommended
More Related Content
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Featured
Featured (20)
NZ Digital & Web Symposium Conference 2016
- 11. Listens and speaks to us
- 13. Finds info based on our interests & location
- 15. Reaches into property DB for useful info
- 17. Interprets our questions, finds relevant answers
- 19. Identifies us, checks the status of a request
- 21. Leverage data from other platforms
- 23. Makes paying for something simple and easy
- 25. Book appointments Add things to calendars/wallets
- 32. 3 Predictions for local government
- 33. Today: Build it
- 35. Today: Websites
- 37. Today: Big Bang Project
- 39. 1. Avoid custom build, use cloud solutions *where possible 2. Don’t build websites, Create online services! 3. Launch early, evolve, evolve, evolve
- 40. Free reports - seamlesscms.com/Insights blog.seamlesscms.com/
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone! My name is Alex, and I'm the Director of Innovation @ Seamless Over the last two days, I’ve had quite a few people ask me.. What the hell is a director of innovation anyway? What do you actually do? So before I kick off the presentation, I thought it might be worth getting that out the way.
- So, I love technology and what you can do with it. I really wanted to build things, but I couldn’t even program a simple HTML table (EPIC Fail). I actually got a reputation for blue-screening and breaking things, even things that no one thought could be broken. So that was a short lived ambition.
- But what I WAS good at however, was coming up with crazy ideas. And leaving the others to worry about how to deliver it. I always say don’t let reality stand in the way of a good idea. So that’s how I landed myself in my role. And the reason I’m here today. I’d like to share with you some ideas about what the future might look like for local government.
- Over the last 10 years, I’ve worked with councils all across Australia. I’ve also had the opportunity to travel around the world to meet and share ideas with some of the most interesting people working in digital government. What does Seamless do? We help Councils better serve their community, by building websites and online services that are a pleasure to use. We’ve worked with close to 80 councils across Australia. Just recently, we been selected by Horowhenua to transform their digital services.
- This is a super cool project, and not just because it was turned around in 4 weeks, but also because what we’re doing here is not just building another website. We are building a digital front door for council. The new platform will make it easy for residents to access council services via easy to use online forms. In fact, the entire site experience is focused on making it simple for residents to complete their tasks. The massive team of two people working on this project are now busy populating content and setting up online services. It should be launching in a month or so, but here’s a sneak peek.
- The layout is clean and focused on tasks. These tasks are device aware, so will change from desktop to mobile based on what we know residents want whilst on the go. In fact, many parts of the site are location aware, such as the listings for events, facilities and works, which can be automatically sorted based on those nearest to you. And SmartForms, which can auto-fill things like address fields based on your current location, as well as showing or hiding questions and sections based on a residents answers.
- And the experience is just as easy and beautiful on tablets and mobile devices. In fact, its probably one of the best examples of a mobile optimised local government web experience.
- But what happens when screen sizes get even smaller? And what happens when we move from these tiny screens, to no screen at all? Just as we’ve finally started mastering the art of mobile, wearable technology is going to change everything again. Right now you might be thinking, how silly – who’d want to access a website from a smart watch? There’s no possible way to navigate a website on something that small. And that’s precisely the point.
- We can’t apply today’s paradigms to tomorrow’s technologies. We’ll need to find new and better ways to interact. And now I’d like to show you how that might look! [Interactive demo]
- Show of hands, who’s seen a movie call HER? Basically, it’s about a guy who ends up developing a relationship with his Operating System, Samantha. Many saw the film as science fiction, I see it as a peak into the future for many of us. What we’re showing today is a demo, it’s not a real app. But I think we’ll be seeing council services on our wrists sooner rather than later. Why so confident? Because many of the elements that I’ve demonstrated just now already exist Let me show you…
- Let’s dissect my demo
- Knows where we are (Geo) Knows what we are looking for (Geo + Tags) Finds the nearest based on our interest
- Detect where we are Cross reference with internal property address Return details based on that address
- Predictive search Prioritise top tasks desktop vs. mobile
- Traffic time for rubbish tip Busy periods for Rubbish Tip Street view
- So what are we waiting for? So what’s stopping us from doing this today?
- Natural Language processing, the ability for computers to understand us and intuit what we want, is getting better and better all the time. Think about all the digital assistants we have like Siri and Google Now. When they first launched, they were nothing more than a party trick. You could ask simple questions like call my mum and what’s the weather. Today, Personal Assistants can now interpret far more sophisticated questions and requests, and provide much more meaningful responses.
- Assistants like Google Now are getting quite clever. Even a bit creepy. For example, if you use Gmail, Google can actively scan your inbox. It can see your flight itinerary, pre-emptively check traffic conditions, and if need be, give you a prompt to leave for the airport earlier than usual due to heavy traffic. What could we achieve by applying some of these technologies to the business of local government? We could help them find information without looking for it, we can pro-actively notify people of council projects or road-works that may effect them on their daily routes, gently remind them of overdue bills or library books, and much more. Digital assistants are also closing in on traditional sites’ territory, providing immediate answers from their respective databases for common questions, and providing immediate functionality whenever possible. As digital assistants become more commonplace, I expect demand and visibility for traditional websites to decline. But what happens when it comes to more that just looking something up? What happens when a simple request starts turning into a complex conversation.
- This is where chatbots come in. A chatbot is designed to simulate conversation with human users. And this is already happening as well. Just recently, a science professor in University in the U.S. created a chat-bot to act as teaching assistant for students. This was not just about fetching an answer to a question, but engaging in an evolving dialogue, where the chat bot uses the context established in the previous parts of the conversation to inform its next answer. The chatbot was so good at answering questions, many students didn’t even realise this teaching assistant was a robot. And at the recent TechCrunch conference, an entrepreneur has demonstrated his 911 chatbot, that uses image detection to provide help and advice to people in emergency situations, whilst it summons the appropriate help to come.
- Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_fK0ELr_i8 Imagine what could be possible when we apply these technologies to our communities day to day problems? Imagine a chat bot that talks residents through the complexities of a building and planning process. It knows the difference between residential, commercial and industrial development, and knows the difference between renovations, extensions or new development. The Chat bot could handle most customer requests, and seamlessly transition to chatting with a real customer support officer for queries too complex for the chatbox to handle. For customers, it will be a smooth and invisible transition. As Council chatbots get to know us better – services will get even more personalised. Council will be able to serve us with personalised news, events and consultations based on our interests and what we’re reading on social media. Council will be able to intuit the right services for people based on their life stages and needs. What' really excites me is that technology that was once too complex for non-technical people is now becoming much simpler and more productized. So how will we leverage all this technology?
- Here are my personal predictions for local government
- Today we are selecting software & building custom solutions on top of it.
- Tomorrow, we will simply be renting best-of-breed solutions in the cloud, because we don't need to build these technologies ourselves! The IBM Watson A.I. is cloud based and already available for rent! And soon many more AI and natural language processing platforms will also be available. We can rent the AI smarts, give them access to our databases and train them to understand the intricacies of local government.
- Today, web managers spend a lot of time working with web agencies to build websites and push pixels
- Tomorrow, web managers will spend more time working with their internal business process owners to assemble digital services. Because many of the tools they will need will be readily available online, and will also integrate with each other, web managers wont be getting bogged down in small details, but will have the opportunity to focus on the big picture.
- Today, most councils still think in terms of ‘projects’ and everything that this means. Big up-front budget. Deliver it all first time around. Hope it lasts a few years till the next budget.
- Tomorrow, Councils will need to recognise that technology is evolving for CapEx to be sustainable. Tomorrow, we’ll need to deliver early, test with real people, learn and improve. And I think this will be a good thing.
- In summary, we are on the cusp of another leap in technology. One that will have an even greater impact than our move from desktops to mobiles. As digital makers, all of us in the room here today will be responsible, and at the forefront of transforming how councils communicate, engage and deliver service to their communities. And that excites me! I hope you enjoyed my presentation. Thank you for listening.