North Sydney case study

North Sydney Council

Transforming business processes and driving accessible, customer-centric online services. 

 

Picture of North Sydney homepage

Using the Jadu Digital Platform, North Sydney Council is now providing customer-centric online services and has improved web accessibility via its newly designed website.

North Sydney Council borders Sydney's harbour and has served as an authority since 1890, catering to over 72,000 residents who rely on a range of public sector services.

 

Colourful laptop on a desk displaying the North Sydney website.

The Challenge

North Sydney Council encountered significant challenges with its outdated CMS solution, which became unsupported and failed to meet expectations. This posed the risk of a dysfunctional website and incurred high maintenance costs. 

However, this challenge also presented an opportunity to transition to a more manageable platform, enhance website accessibility, and improve the online customer experience.

Residents' expectations for user-friendly services, communications, and submissions were rising, necessitating a platform that digitised council processes while supporting traditional telephone contact. The council needed to modernise its internal web culture, previously treating web assets as brochures or repositories. To meet resident expectations, the council required a web platform enabling secure online payments, centralising services, and simplifying online forms for enhanced efficiency. The existing CMS technology was outdated, lacked functionality, and required constant upgrades. The council's focus on digital services aligned with its core values and commitment to accessibility, as outlined in the North Sydney Council Community Strategic Plan and Disability Inclusion Action Plan.

The Solution

North Sydney Council now has a modern digital platform that meets its resident's expectations. The Jadu Digital Platform was selected as best meeting the needs of the council following a robust procurement process.

The Jadu platform's flexibility and scalability allowed the council to create mobile-responsive sites with pre-publication previews, ensuring consistent content using role assignments and approval levels.

Ian Robertson, Service Unit Manager Corporate Governance at North Sydney Council emphasises that accessibility is a fundamental council value, aligning with community principles to guarantee universal website access. He notes that fostering accessibility has represented a significant cultural shift, with the council investing in internal education through training and workshops, including working closely with Jadu to provide eye tracking user testing with a cross section of the council’s user base. Tangible improvements include enhanced navigation, simplified language, e-reader compatibility, optimised images, increased Alt tag usage, and reduced reliance on PDF documents.

 

Mobile device showcasing the North Sydney website.

We liked Jadu because of how they talked about putting the customer at the centre of digital services and crafting the journey around them

Ian Robertson, Service Unit Manager Corporate Governance.

Tablet device displaying North Sydney website.

The Results

North Sydney Council has an accessible, end-to-end website that has reduced demands on its contact centre, retained traffic, reduced the amount of PDFs and has been well received by its citizens.

The council plans to use Jadu Galaxies for launching tourist and facility-specific sites such as the North Sydney pool. "I like that it is a centralised system, which means we can control these in one place, yet they look related to the main website," says Ian.

The Jadu Digital Platform will streamline business processes at North Sydney Council, linking council meeting papers directly to the website for residents', helping save time. Work continues to modernise forms, transactions, and customer experience processes.

 

Download the full case study here (PDF)