OutSystems today announced a surge in state and local government agencies adopting its low-code application development platform. Customers like Las Vegas, Oakland, Shawnee, Worcestershire, Surrey, Devon, and the London Borough of Hackney are using low-code to help achieve three top digital priorities: improve the citizen experience, reduce IT debt, and cut operational costs.

"We wanted to make a real impact. By using OutSystems, we are able to make our city’s services immediately available to all residents, especially to our underserved communities. That’s transformative," said Andrew “Pete” Peterson, CIO/CTO, City of Oakland.

“The expectations on digital solutions continue to grow as the transition to digital government builds momentum. According to the 2019 Gartner CIO Survey, 53% of digital initiatives in government organizations have started to move beyond the design stage and are delivering at least the early stages of digitally driven outcomes. This is up from 40% in the prior year.” [Gartner: Predicts 2019: Establish the Foundations for Next-Generation Digital Government Success, December 7, 2018]

As a result, the demand for application development is higher than ever in the public sector. In The 2018-2019 State of Application Development Local Government Report, 44 percent of government respondents stated they had 10 applications to deliver, 22 percent said 25, and 13 percent said 100 or more. Yet 49 percent of respondents said the average time to deliver a web or mobile application was five months or more.

“Four main challenges slow down traditional software development in local government— inadequate funding, gridlock from inflexible disjointed legacy systems, security concerns, and a shortage of modern development skills,” says Mike Hughes, product evangelist at OutSystems.

“Low-code development with OutSystems is up to 10 times faster than traditional coding, which enables government IT teams to deliver more, even with funding constraints. The visual development environment addresses a tight or shrinking talent pool and translates application models into secure code patterns, safeguarding citizen data,” says Hughes. “In addition, OutSystems makes it easy to extend or replace legacy systems that are otherwise hard to change and costly to maintain.”

OutSystems has numerous local government customers that are benefiting from the speed and ease of its low-code platform. These include:

• The City of Las Vegas delivered multiple internal and citizen-facing web and mobile apps, including a Mobile Inspector App. Two developers built this app in just three months, less than half the time the city initially estimated. Benefits include faster inspections and less travel by inspectors who now seldom need to visit the office.
• The City of Oakland built numerous applications with only six people, including an app that gives citizen access to all resident-facing applications with a single sign-in, saving the city over $1 million in 12 months.
• The London Borough of Hackney is using OutSystems to enhance its digital services by delivering numerous critical applications that will support tenants and leaseholders in its housing estate.
• The City of Shawnee shifted its legacy Lotus Notes apps to OutSystems and added new mobile and web development capabilities. After just one year, the city has 30 applications running on the platform.
• The Worcestershire County Council launched a Digital by Default initiative enabling 100 percent of its services to be accessed online. By using OutSystems, the Council expects to save £2.8 million over three years, with a 442 percent return on investment.
• The Local Government Shared Services (LGSS) is one of the UK’s largest public sector shared service operations. They simplify and standardize processes and share the benefits of technology and innovation among the county councils of Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes Council. They have standardized on OutSystems to power their digital services and have released eight citizen-facing applications in their first year.

More details on these local government low-code case studies and on the OutSystems platform for local government are available on the OutSystems website.