Local government organizations today face an important opportunity to revolutionize how they function and how they meet the fast-evolving needs and expectations of their customers in the digital era — the citizens, businesses, partners, leaders and stakeholders across the diverse cities and communities they serve. 

Government organizations at the local level — and the cities, rural localities and services they oversee — now find themselves poised to drive progress for a new era of customer-centric service. They are already building on the limited but real momentum they have created to date — momentum that has clearly accelerated amid the global pandemic’s dramatic impact. Local government organizations have been catapulted into a new model of public service — one wrought under emergency circumstances that have unmistakably revealed the exciting and inevitable way forward in providing a modern customer experience that today’s citizens and businesses expect. 

Local authorities are uniquely positioned to quickly identify and respond to the needs of their customers in local communities everywhere, including citizens and taxpayers, healthcare patients, schools, transit users, businesses, clients, suppliers, employees, tourists and visitors. Done well, as local services being delivered in many nations during the pandemic continue to illustrate, future local government organizations will serve as a viable and proactive community-based platform — one connected to all constituents and responding to their specific needs quickly and reliably.