“What will be your legacy?” A question posed one night between buddies became the impetus for Andrew “Pete” Peterson to leave the private sector and spearhead the City of Oakland’s mission of transforming its digital services for citizens.

A Half a Million Dollars Saved for the City of Oakland

But as you can imagine, the City of Oakland was strapped by budget and resources, like many organizations in the government sector. OutSystems became key to their ability to build numerous applications with a lean team of five developers and one manager. In fact, the city had allocated $500,000 to build a new human resource management application. But by building it in-house with OutSystems, the team incurred $0 outside costs, saving the city a half million dollars. Cost savings are just part of the city’s digital transformation.

OAK APP is A-OK for the City of Oakland and Residents

The work has been impactful for residents, too. Residents now have access to OAK APPS, a secure, one-stop shop for all web-based city services. Registering at apps.oaklandca.gov gives citizens single sign-on access to all resident-facing applications available. So rather than having to log on to multiple portals to access Parks and Rec, business taxes, zoning, and more, OAK APPS gives each resident access to every application that the city offers, without having to re-enter profile information.

Internally, OAK APPS gives the city a single view of each resident. In the future, this will help the city market relevant city services to them. This is helpful to residents, too, because individuals may not be aware of all the services available to them, like multilingual legal services, a rent adjustment program, a Police Review Board, and a business assistance center, to name a few. By doing this, the city is able to give residents a greater level of transparency into the services their tax dollars are supporting.

Now Watch This

Check out this video to learn more about the transformative work that the City of Oakland is doing and how OutSystems helped the organization build various applications on a tight budget with a lean development team.