About Civica
Civica provides software applications for public services sectors, including local authorities, schools and colleges, government, health and social care, social housing, and police and fire services. With over 30 years of sector experience, Civica is a global company focused on improving organisational processes and the public experience. Civica partners with organisations at a national and local level, helping over 2.5 million professionals deliver modern public services, every day.
Civica Xpress
Civica Xpress is an end-to-end election management system that allows local authorities to manage year-round electoral registration, as well as building and running all types of elections and referendums. As well as providing electoral management software, Civica Xpress partners with Local Authorities to deliver training on electoral compliance to Polling Station Inspectors, Presiding Officers and Poll Clerks in polling stations across the UK. Their Mobile Canvasser app also supports training for the annual canvas.
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Civica Xpress partners with Frog
Background
Across the many types of election that happen in the UK – from council elections and general elections, through to by-elections and referenda – Civica Xpress has a history of delivering electoral compliance training to Presiding Officers and Poll Clerks in polling stations across the UK.
This represents training on a huge scale.
In each Local Authority, depending on its size, anything from a few hundred up to thousands of electoral workers may need to be trained in any given election.
In the past, this training was delivered through specially commissioned videos, which could be used to lead staff training within an authority. This was a costly model of training delivery, however. With every election having different rules and challenges, new videos were continually being made to reflect the precise conditions of the election.
As well as this, there was no clear way to track engagement with the videos – or assess understanding, to be sure that people were engaging with and understanding the training that was delivered.
Civica Xpress partners with Frog
A clear drive for improvement led to Civica Xpress working with Frog.
The team at Civica wanted to find a way to lower costs, build more efficiency into their training delivery, make their training offering more agile and scalable, and ensure more accountability.
There were some crucial requirements that Civica Xpress needed to satisfy, in sourcing a training platform.
It needed to be fully branded to Civica Xpress’s requirements. It needed to be accessible on any device. It had to be intuitive and easy to use, since many end users were unfamiliar with digital technology. It needed to be able to deliver, track and report on training at scale. It had to allow for easy course authoring, so that Civica Xpress could be agile and responsive in the training it offered. And it needed to be commercially flexible, to reflect the ad-hoc nature of its use.
Frog offered a solution that ticked every box.
Making a difference
Frog’s platform has made it straightforward to build and deliver training quickly, at scale and with agility. The team at Civica can now respond to the particular requirements of a given election and can track engagement and understanding at a granular level.
“Frog is an easy to use and effective product that equips us with everything we need – from content creation and user licence administration, through to reporting, branding, and adapting to different learner styles. It is powerful stuff.”
SHAUNI HEARNE TRAINING MANAGER
The value of partnership
Shauni Hearne, Training Manager at Civica, has been instrumental in implementing the new training platform. Shauni loves using Frog, but she believes that that there is more than technology to the success of the project.
“For me personally, what gives Frog the unique edge is the team behind it. The team are always quick to respond to any queries or issues we have and are very reactive when needed. They make themselves available to train me on other areas I might not utilise yet and provide top tips, demo what’s coming.
They communicate any releases/downtime/updates which is key when we are at our busiest period at Election time.
Importantly, the team are also keen to work together rather than as two separate companies – this builds a great relationship and trust between both parties.”
SHAUNI HEARNE TRAINING MANAGER
What is next?
Civica Xpress will continue to use Frog to deliver electoral training to Polling Station Inspectors, Presiding Officers and Poll Clerks.
However, as a SaaS solution, the Civica Xpress team is now using Frog to develop product training that will help client Local Authorities get the most out of the Civica Xpress electoral management system.
Product training for the Mobile Canvas App (MCA) is already in place, and will be used to support Local Authority electoral teams in administrating the annual canvas efficiently.
Following from this, Frog will be used to train Administrators, Poll Clerks, Presiding Officers and Polling Station Inspectors in the use of Civica’s Mobile Election Application (MEA). This will ensure that Local Authorities will get the most out of the software, and that their staff are fully trained in using it.
For more information on how Civica Xpress supports electoral management in Local Authorities across the UK, visit www.civica.com.