Planning Portal – a strategic approach to the future

Overview

Planning Portal is the public sector organisation which provides information and services on planning and building regulations to public and professional users.

Planning Portal asked cxpartners to help develop an online strategy that would shape their service for years to come.

We ran workshops that helped stakeholders to see Planning Portal from their users’ perspective and apply their expert knowledge to solve their problems.




The result was a strategy that excited stakeholders who could see how to serve both the organisation and its users.

A strategy that motivates and focuses staff is a powerful way of creating change within any business.

Aims

Planning Portal wanted us to work with them on their online strategy leading to the design for a new online planning application process.

What we did

TIP: Stakeholder workshops Find out about how cxpartners run stakeholder workshops

Planning Portal asked us to take the knowledge we have of their service and user groups as well as our industry knowledge (web, social media) to help them define a vision for their site and for what it would look like in the coming years.

We worked with the Planning Portal team to understand stakeholder needs and desires, and we took business vision from the Director and his key reports.

We then distilled what we knew about their users into stories and models depicting the problems their users often encountered.

We used this as the springboard in a workshop at the Planning Portal annual away day. The entire Planning Portal staff worked together to define a vision for the organisations’ future.

This workshop involved the staff members working in groups and teams, the outcome provided the Planning Portal with a set of ideas they could use to inform their decisions.

The results

TIP: Vision development Find out about how cxpartners conduct vision development

By involving all the stakeholders and combining their knowledge with our own areas of expertise, we were able to collate a set of approaches for the future which cover business knowledge as well as user needs.

Planning Portal now has a vision which it can apply across a range of projects to continually improve the user experience its site delivers.

In 2008 the Planning Portal won the Public Value Award at the Civil Service Awards which is reserved for services that offer value for money and make an outstanding contribution to the public.

The new site is in development and will be launched during 2010.