Dog Licenses
An overview of the currently inactive Dog Licenses project
Project Overview
The Dog Licenses app is a tool for applying for, renewing and looking up a dog license in the City of Boston. The app is owned by Animal Care/Control.
App is currently located here: https://www.cityofboston.gov/animals/licenseapp/
Yearly maintenance needed on this app: Dropdown for previous year needs to be updated yearly around the turn of the new year (January 1) so that people can reference a license number from the year prior.Dropdown for year needs to be updated yearly around the turn of the new year (January 1) so that people can reference a license number from the year prior.
Project Purpose
Improve the existing business process(es) associated with applying for new dog license or renewing/looking up an existing dog license.
Current process:
Tracking: Essentially the cityofboston.gov sends Animal Care and Control an email, and staff manually enter information from that email into Chameleon.
Chameleon is a software used by Animal Care and Control to track the licenses - all info that is submitted. Theoretically shares information nationally with any groups that also use the software and/or with major sites for lost pets, etc.
Form Submission: Custom asp.net form app.
Payments: Connects to Invoicecloud payments API - payment data sent via invoicecloud.
Desired process: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_0Rju6iKR0aWXl0SzI1bUJ4LWc
Project History
05/07/2019 - Reilly checked with Susan Hynes - Susan couldn’t find any contracts in Peoplesoft financials for Chameleon or Chameleon beach
Animal Care and Control mentioned that Georges/Enterprise worked with Chameleon, so Jeanethe check with Joe/Goerges on this. Georges said the only one he knew that worked on a connection for animal licenses was Jeff Ng who helped connect cityofboston.gov to invoice cloud a few years ago. More on this here: See line 20 here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P6aBfR0rlltQgrCupTcvCvO70HzViQe6HxI3IiJWLXA/edit#gid=1207577308
Project next steps
Things to explore:
General discovery with Alexis/Animal Care and Control
Explore use of chameleon (https://chameleonbeach.com/), i.e. software used by Animal Care and Control to track the licenses - all info that is submitted.
Explore automation of manual entry of information from emails (cityofboston.gov) into Chameleon. Can this be automated?
Discrepancies between what is asked in person or via mail versus what is asked online. Note: There are differences - Example: We don't prompt for the aging population to get a discount like we do in person and via mail.
Explore fee waiver use cases (e.g., do seeing eye dogs get fees waived?)
Online payment. Is this another opportunity for Stripe? Currently connected to Invoice Cloud, but users get kicks to invoice cloud landing page.
Explore merits of moving to Drupal or something else like forms, relative to keeping the app separate?
Existing issues/obstacles:
'Breaks' from time to time due to miscellaneous issues
Existing assets:
We have feedback from constituents from feedback emails and customer satisfaction survey which is a Seamlessdoc > needs to be pulled/analyzed.
Project Plan
Jeanethe is on deck to set up a time with Animal Care and Control for next steps
PHASE I: DISCOVER
List of internal users and roles
List of external users groups
Anyone needing to get a dog in Boston licensed, which
User journey map
For each group, a list of their needs, and whether/how they are being met by existing processes or technology
Summarized insights from interviews with users (internal and external)
Summarized information and supporting documentation on existing processes and technologies and any constraints they impose
Survey of existing solutions (digital or not, in government or other industries)
Metrics to determine what success looks like
Hypotheses you will test during the prototyping phase
PHASE II: PLAN
Project scope
Preliminary project timeline, including milestones, deliverables, and resources needed at each stage
PHASE III: PROTOTYPE
Define minimum viable prototype to test with users
User testing plan and script
Summarized findings from user testing
PHASE IV: BUILD/BUY
Build vs. buy recommendation with supporting rationale
If buying, summarized information on the vendor selected
List of expected phases of implementation (e.g. staged releases or alpha version)
Documentation on the technology or processes involved
Plan for collecting and incorporating feedback
Plan for publicizing the product
PHASE V: IMPROVE
Notes from retrospective
Feedback from users post-launch
User metrics
Plan going forward
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