IVY Partners supports a Swiss Canton State Council through the modernisation and digitisation of meetings, communications and business authorizations.
Project scope
National, regional and local governments face many challenges modernizing their IT and communications in the times of COVID and growing political or regional uncertainties. Like many others, they face shrinking budgets, pressure for accountability and growing disruption to traditional meeting patterns with remote work limitations.
Government agencies can leverage technology to streamline processes, improving efficiency and becoming much more cost-effective.
The project objective
IVY Partners was tasked to help modernize and digitize the management of the Council meetings and its protocol agenda, orchestrated through an application used by members of the State Council. This task, along with adding clarity to the protocol and agenda, required updates and development of the architecture, business processes, design and the implementation of mobile and web applications.
The project goals were to improve the user experience in arranging and understanding the topics’ meetings, enabling members to focus on the key subjects rather than administrative tasks. To streamline meetings and their results, documents needed to be more accessible and enabled for annotations to improve minute-taking.
Our Solution
The application is an in-house product that enables easy consultation through iOS tablets for meetings and documents of the Council of State and formal agendas.
The expected modernization focused on 3 key areas:
- Enabling offline consultation for documents and adding annotation features to map their previous paper-behaviour
- Make the current process of State council meeting (preparation and meeting) smoother by leveraging the mobile technology
- Providing a highly secure environment on the tablet application
- IVY Partners handled the design, user experience, development and integration of the application to deliver an easy-to-use solution in line with their existing branding.
IVY Partners handled the design, user experience, development and integration of the application to deliver an easy-to-use solution in line with their existing branding.
The technology behind the implemented solution includes:
- iOS, Objective-C, Swift, Java, JEE, Angular, Xcode, IntelliJ, Oracle
- CMIS (Specific protocol relating to the exchange of documentary data) and REST API
- Exchange protocols, security, meeting the confidential frameworks imposed by the State Council
- Mobile MDM solution enabled by Mobile Iron.
The Outcomes
The project delivered a tablet application that provided a unified grouping of members’ diaries, agendas and key documents for Council meetings.
Application Enhancement: Update and relaunch the original web application, integrating new services and features.
Personalized Agendas: Provide custom protocol agendas tailored for each member.
Secure Document Access: Enable secure access to consultation documents for member sessions, both online and offline, using robust encryption for data protection.
Collaborative Annotations: Facilitate personalized annotation of objects and documents to enhance collaboration during meetings.
Business Authorization Integration: Incorporate the granularity of business authorizations from the existing internal system.
Ongoing Development: Ivy Partners continues to oversee maintenance and further development of the project.
Benefits for the Council and its users
Productivity Boost: Online storage and instant accessibility greatly enhance productivity, saving valuable time for the Council and administrators.
Offline Accessibility: The system supports offline mode on tablets, enabling users to securely work on sensitive documents from anywhere.
Cost Reduction: Digital document management significantly cuts down on paper usage, also saving on printing costs.
Unified Processes: Ensures everyone accesses the most current document version, reducing duplicates and improving decision-making while lowering human error risk.
Enhanced Efficiency: Automates processes to quicken decision-making and operational efficiency, saving both time and money.
Comprehensive Business Improvement: Addresses transparency, engagement, and efficiency – three crucial areas for enhancing government service value.