Challenges

The City of Skalica manages many interfaces and channels to communicate with its citizens, from social media and the city website to a residents' web portal and a dedicated mobile app.

Most of these are isolated solutions. They aren't connected, and they don't share a common user database, login method, or way of managing and distributing information. So they mostly serve a single purpose and leave little room to develop new services for citizens.

Fragmented solutions like these raise operating costs and put a disproportionate load on staff inside the organization. The main reason is that they aren't connected to internal systems such as project or process management and IT support.

The city's main challenge was to create a solution that gives residents a simple way to stay informed about what's happening at the city office and about cultural and sports events.

The city also wanted a service that lets citizens use benefits at city events and that can serve many purposes: opening public restroom doors, opening fenced waste collection points, or acting as a city library membership card or a parking card.

Goals

The project aimed to implement a multi-purpose software platform that would:

Give citizens a simple, familiar environment: a digital card in their iOS or Android wallet (Apple Wallet / Google Wallet). 

Deliver up-to-date news from the city office and alert users to upcoming cultural and sports events through push notifications.

Offer citizens an easy way to view and use the benefits assigned to them. The card can serve as a membership card (e.g. for the city library) and can let citizens interact with the city's technical infrastructure. Digital cards are usually used only for benefits or memberships. With this connection, the city can make time-limited places easier to access (such as opening a public restroom) or create entirely new services, like locking waste collection points, making life more comfortable for residents.

Serve as a gateway to the city's online services, such as the portal for paying taxes and fees online and the upcoming ticket sales for city events.

Through this project, Skalica City Office set out to acquire a multi-purpose, multi-application software platform open enough to integrate with existing and future systems.

Provide full management of how digital smart cards are distributed to citizens and administered, including managing the process and criteria for granting benefits, with integration to POS terminals.

Let the city roll out project and process management, an IT support system, unified social media management, and online ticket sales for city events.

Solution

The solution is built on the proven Odoo ERP. Odoo offers a wide range of apps and lets you develop new ones, and it's open enough to integrate with third-party systems (for example through APIs and webhooks).

These strengths made it possible to quickly build the non-standard parts and speed up deployment.

The solution has three separate parts from three suppliers:

Odoo ERP - main contractor 26HOUSE: 
a comprehensive, multi-purpose platform

Digital card, subcontractor PassMachine: integration with the issuer of certified cards for Apple Wallet and Google Wallet

CG ISS, subcontractor CORAgeo:
integration with part of the local government information system, which makes registration simpler and verifies citizens reliably before cards are issued automatically

Implementation

The implementation in Skalica ran in several phases, to keep disruption to the office to a minimum and let users adapt step by step:

• Needs analysis
• Architecture and process design
• Development and customization
• Testing and user training
• Migration and Go Live
• Support and optimization
  

The main part of the solution that users interact with is the digital card, added to the native Apple Wallet or Google Wallet app. It needs no updates and won't "disappear" from the phone if it goes unused for a while, so the city always has a way to reach citizens. Citizens already know how it works from credit cards, retail loyalty cards and similar.

Besides benefits, the solution was designed and built to serve many purposes, including the connection to technical infrastructure mentioned above, which lets users open public restroom doors or waste collection points. The system can also work as a multipass: a parking card, a membership card and more.

What citizens gained from the implementation:

• a digital card
• benefits
• a connection to technical infrastructure
• a hub for existing online services
• instant push notifications
  

What Skalica City Office gained from the implementation:

• comprehensive management of products, benefits and the digital card
• a project and process management system
• an IT support system and intranet
• unified social media management and auditable communication
• online ticket sales
• an AI virtual assistant

„There are many benefit card solutions out there, but most of them serve just one purpose, which didn't suit us. 26HOUSE builds on the reliable Odoo software, and thanks to its customizations we got not only a platform for managing benefits and communication, but also apps like project management, helpdesk and many more. In the long run these will lower our operating costs and, most importantly, raise the quality of the services the city hall provides to our fellow citizens.“
Ing. Anton Bobrík, Head of Skalica City Office

Development Roadmap

The successful Odoo ERP implementation in Skalica was only the first step. The city quickly realized the system is an investment in its residents, the local economy and efficient city management. It brings benefits to people, businesses and the city office itself, all in one comprehensive solution.

Coming soon:

• Unifying all city websites on the Odoo platform, bringing a consistent look, simpler content management and a better experience for residents.
• Launching a helpdesk for citizens, so requests and questions from the public can be handled more efficiently.
• Extending modules to more city services, gradually moving as many processes as possible into one system.

Skalica shows that Odoo isn't just a one-off fix for a specific problem but a long-term strategy for the city's digital transformation. The good experience from the first phase is motivating both management and staff to keep the project going and take it further.

Links

Enomka | digitálna karta obyvateľa Skalice -https://www.enomka.sk

Skalica | mestská stránka -https://www.skalica.sk