How Newark Optimizes Engagement for Its Community and Staff

Organization Profile

• Industry: Municipal
• Location: Newark, Delaware
• Number of Employees: 250
• Population: 31,000
• Tyler Client Since: 2002
• Tyler Products/Solutions: Enterprise ERP (powered by Munis®), Enterprise Permitting & Licensing (powered by EnerGov™), Enterprise Public Safety (powered by New World™), Cashiering, Content Manager, Enterprise Asset Management, Enterprise Service Requests, Data & Insights, My Civic, Payments

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Home to a diverse population, the city of Newark, Delaware, prides itself on meeting the needs of its community with forward-thinking projects such as green initiatives that include electric vehicles and bike trails. Another example of a Newark initiative to serve its community and employees is the implementation of tech to provide transparency and streamline operations.

When assessing community needs, Newark recognized that resident and utility customer inquiries go beyond the typical workday. In response, the city sought a mobile app to provide easy-to-find information 24/7. This functionality would also help Newark meet the expectations of students at the University of Delaware, located in the city.

In addition, Newark recognized an opportunity to use technology to meet the needs of city employees by optimizing HR operations to reduce time-consuming tasks and errors.

To achieve these goals, Newark turned to Tyler’s connected Public Administration suite, specifically:

• My Civic, a public-facing mobile app through which residents and business owners can access all the services, resources, and information an organization has to offer.
• Employee Self-Service, a portal through which staff can easily monitor and maintain personal and employment information, including paid time off, accrual requests, pay history, benefits selections, job openings, performance evaluations, and more.

My Civic

The city of Newark saw an opportunity to make information and news more accessible by implementing Tyler’s My Civic app, which the city has branded as AskNewarkDE.

“We were looking for a way to replace our report-a-concern feature, which is an electronic way for citizens to report issues they wanted resolved,” says Daina Montgomery, city of Newark IT applications manager. “We looked at a few different software applications, and then when we demoed My Civic we found that it not only met the needs of this report-a-concern issue, but it also gave us the ability to develop and brand an app for our citizens that would give them a wealth of information.”

AskNewarkDE has increased transparency between members of the Newark City Council and residents and has provided access to information that was historically difficult to find on the city’s website. The app provides reliable information directly to users, decreasing staff time answering phones and freeing time to tend to more pressing or time-sensitive matters.

“I would say the big win is that the My Civic app allowed our residents to have a one-stop shop,” says Montgomery. “They have the information at their fingertips versus having to go out to our website and search for the information or reach out to one of our staff members to get the information they need. It’s right there at their fingertips.”

Employee Self Service

Completing open enrollment for 250-plus employees every year was daunting for Newark’s small staff. Tasks included maintaining and processing paperwork for all medical, dental, and vision selections, as well as selections for five benefit programs. Manual processes led to input errors.

“We started looking for a solution, and we came up with Employee Self Service,” says Jill Hollander, city of Newark controller/deputy finance director. “We decided giving ownership of signing up for those benefits on the employee made them more accountable. And it saved a significant amount of time because when we were doing it manually, we actually had to enter all of the personnel actions one at a time for each employee, which could take a lot of time.”

Since turning to Employee Self Service and eliminating intermediary data entry from paper forms, the city has saved time and reduced data errors. In addition, the ease of using Employee Self Service has led to employees enrolling in benefits they otherwise would have passed on.

Results

To improve engagement and optimize operations for its community and employees, the city of Newark’s use of My Civic and Employee Self Service has:

• Increased transparency for its community with improved access to information.
• Empowered employees to update open enrollment data via an employee self-service portal, reducing errors and staff time spent on data entry.