Background: The residents of the City of Bern contact the city administration with a wide variety of inquiries, creating a large administrative effort. This is why the city administration wants to use a portal to offer online services to its residents in the future.
Challenge: Nevertheless, the development of online services presents a major challenge: digitization allows easy access to public services, but to do so, the platform has to accommodate a variety of age groups and issues. Only then will it be able to offer low-threshold, inclusive access to all its residents. The City of Bern, therefore, decided to work with Mimacom as a user experience expert. Together, they developed a customer portal strategy enabling the city administration to translate the needs of its residents efficiently into online services.
In-person visits to access government services are a thing of the past – digitalization and automation are creating new opportunities. The aim of the portal is to bring the online services of the City of Bern closer to the people and to contribute to a higher quality of life. From the perspective of the city administration, this is based on a service understanding that focuses on user experience rather than technology.
As part of the E-Bern innovation project, municipal services will be systematically developed from the user's perspective going forward. For example, residents who have recently moved to Bern will automatically receive all the necessary documents automatically and have access to online information available in their language.
Solution: Mimacom approached this understanding of service with human-centered design, a methodology that puts the needs of users first. Mimacom used regular interviews and tests to understand the needs and requirements of the residents and to develop a customer portal strategy that meets them.
The project was used as a preliminary study to find out how to provide residents with the services they need. For Jonathan Gimmel, this was about finding the right concept rather than the perfect solution.