Worcestershire County Council powers citizens’ self-service with AI and OutSystems
Worcestershire County Council adopted OutSystems to modernize citizen services and reduce operational costs. Today, almost all of their public services are available online. OutSystems is also a core pillar of Worcestershire’s AI strategy, with agentic apps that automate document validation and reduce manual review. Over the course of this journey, Worcestershire shifted 80% of customer contacts to self-service, and saved hundreds of hours in manual reviews. These results prove that a unified platform can power both digital transformation and responsible AI at scale.
80%
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"Our investment in OutSystems has given us a strong foundation for adopting AI and automation. It allows us to develop applications and agents within a connected, secure, and well-governed environment, ensuring they can work together and evolve alongside our services."
Embracing digital modernization to improve citizen experience
Worcestershire County Council provides essential local government services to approximately 600,000 people in central England. But behind its eponymous sauce and the idyllic countryside that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Worcestershire faced a very modern challenge: the need to cut operational costs through digital channels while meeting the expectations of citizens accustomed to modern, online experiences.
“Just like other local authorities in the UK, we were under pressure to lower our costs in response to spending cuts, while the cost of providing social care for an aging population kept rising,” explained Jo Hilditch, Head of Digital, Data and Web Services.
This led the Digital Delivery Team to search for an application development platform capable of delivering digital transformation at scale.
In 2015, the team adopted OutSystems for its ability to develop citizen-facing portals and mobile apps alongside integrated back-office applications, while meeting the needs of its .NET-centric developers. The platform would also help the team speed up development, collaborate more closely with business stakeholders, and lower the cost of application maintenance.
"The value of OutSystems is that it helps us deliver digital change at a pace and scale that would be difficult with traditional development alone. It supports faster service redesign, citizen self-service, internal process automation, integration with back-office systems, and rapid response to changing demand."
From 0 to a fully digital government
Since the beginning of their journey with OutSystems, Jo and the Digital Delivery Team delivered more than 100 applications, most public-facing, others supporting internal processes, as part of the Worcestershire Digital Transformation program.
Some of those apps include:
- “Channel Shift Capabilities”, which moved 80% of routine requests to self-service web forms, reducing contact center workload.
- “School Transport”, that allows citizens to apply for, pay for, renew and track applications fully online.
The team also built “Digital SafeSteps”, a practice space where residents can try online forms risk-free before submitting them for real. The app was designed to combat digital exclusion and build confidence among those who feel anxious about digital services. “‘Digital SafeSteps’ is one of our most impressive applications because it combines innovation, accessibility, social value, and practical digital inclusion,” added Jo. “It shows how OutSystems can be used to make services more efficient, fairer, safer and easier for residents who need the most support.”
"Being able to practise without panic or worry changed everything. This is the first time I've ever done it by myself."
Using a governed platform to control AI costs
Since adopting OutSystems, Worcestershire County Council has fully digitized their public services. But with the rise of AI, Jo and team saw an opportunity to take this digital strategy further. “We started looking at AI as a way to safely reduce repetitive administrative work and make processes more efficient, while ensuring that good service design and human judgement remain at the heart of our services,” said Jo.
OutSystems fit naturally into this next step. Its platform approach to agentic AI gives the Digital Delivery Team a consistent development environment where developers can embed AI capabilities into applications staff already use, reducing isolated experiments and supporting reuse, supportability and safer change management.
Additionally, as a public service provider, Worcestershire depends on correct data and strict processes. So, having a platform that enables the team to build apps with the full context regarding the institution’s policies, document sources, and organizational structures was critical. Finally, with OutSystems, Worcestershire can better control costs and prevent unmanaged AI sprawl across disconnected point solutions, as Jo explained:
"Rather than allowing it to spread through disconnected tools, we are embedding AI into defined applications built with OutSystems and other technologies that have a clear business purpose, controlled data sources and known users. This approach also allows us to review model choice, using lower-cost models where they meet the service need."
How AI is transforming citizen experience
The first agent built entirely on the OutSystems agentic systems platform is the “Bus Pass AI Agent”. This agentic app validates concessionary travel pass evidence before human review, catching invalid uploads (for example, photos that don’t match the criteria) and eliminating the back-and-forth that once burdened the admin team.
Additionally, the team built five other agentic solutions that integrate OutSystems applications with GPT-4 through Azure for the AI elements:
- An “HR Knowledge Base” provides an AI assistant that can answer questions using Worcestershire County Council policies and procedures, quote relevant information and provide a link to the source policy.
- A “School Attendance Fines AI Document Validator” extracts content from uploaded documents and checks it against agreed criteria, giving a validity judgement, reasons for invalid documents and a confidence rating.
- A “Reading Pledge Wall Text Input Validator” checks whether submitted reading pledges are valid and appropriate for public display.
- A “Testing Feedback to Actionable Tasks” converts testing feedback into actionable tasks for business analysts or developers as part of the wider “Track Project” platform.
- And a “LGR Risk Register AI Document Importer” extracts content from varied documents and maps it to the correct database fields in OutSystems, helping collate risks from different councils into one system.
"OutSystems gives us a controlled, reusable and scalable way to build citizen-facing services, internal workflow tools and integrated back office applications quickly. Now, with AI we can extend that approach by automating more complex knowledge, document and validation tasks, while keeping delivery connected to established platforms, data sources and governance."
Digital and agentic services save hundreds of hours every year
Since Worcestershire adopted OutSystems, Jo’s team has built over 100 apps on the platform. During a period that accelerated digital change across the organization, they delivered 22 apps to support their community at crucial times, some in under 24 hours. “We were able to do that in an incredibly agile way, thanks to the OutSystems approach,” Jo added.
"With OutSystems, we deliver solutions to our citizens three to four times faster when compared to traditional development. The more we develop on the platform, the more reusable AI components and patterns we have, the faster we are. But it’s not just speed, it’s speed with governance and security."
As for the agentic apps, they have transformed Worcestershire’s operations. The “School Attendance Fines Validator” saves up to 200 hours a year on document checking, achieving over 75% accuracy across nearly 200 documents validated.
Meanwhile, in the first eight months since its launch, the “Bus Pass AI Agent” has processed 2,498 applications, automatically validating 7,494 uploaded documents, isolating and rejecting 643 invalid photos, 364 incorrect proof-of-address documents, and 286 invalid dates of birth. By catching these errors instantly at the point of contact, the agent prevents bad data from reaching human reviewers and eliminates hours of back-and-forth administration.
As Jo put it, the goal was never to replace good service design or human judgment. It was to make both work faster, safer, and smarter. For Worcestershire, OutSystems made that possible.
"Before the [School Attendance Fines] AI screening tool, checking an application could take up to an hour as every document and piece of information had to be reviewed manually. Now, AI does it in minutes, highlighting anything that may need further attention. We still make all decisions, but the tool helps us work more efficiently and ensures we can focus on the areas where professional judgement adds the most value."
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