# Municipal CRM: Citizen Services and Representative Casework Platform

## Overview

The Municipal CRM module delivers a unified customer relationship management platform for local authorities and municipal governments, consolidating citizen service request management, elected representative casework, field crew coordination, and cross-agency incident handling into a single operational environment. Citizens submit service requests through self-service portals, track their progress in real time, and receive automated updates. Elected representatives file formal representations on behalf of constituents and manage their case pipeline. Staff classify, route, and resolve requests with AI-assisted categorisation, SLA tracking, and escalation management. Field crews receive and update work orders from mobile devices in the field.

The module is designed to replace fragmented legacy systems, paper forms, email inboxes, spreadsheet trackers, with a structured, auditable, and integrated citizen engagement layer that connects directly to the platform's incident management, field operations, and notifications infrastructure.

## Key Features

- **Citizen Self-Service Portal**: Citizens submit service requests, reports, and enquiries through branded web forms without requiring an account, with optional authenticated submission for tracking and correspondence history
- **Intelligent Request Classification**: Submitted requests are automatically classified by category (roads, waste, planning, environment, housing, utilities, community) and routed to the correct team, reducing triage time and eliminating misrouted submissions
- **Representative Casework**: Elected members file formal representations on behalf of constituents with structured intake (issue type, constituent details, desired outcome), response workflows with approval routing, and case history for accountability
- **SLA Tracking and Escalation**: Every service request has a configurable SLA based on request category and priority, with automated escalation notifications when deadlines approach and management dashboards showing SLA compliance across teams and service areas
- **PDF Response Generation**: Official written responses to constituent queries and representations are generated as formatted PDF documents carrying the organisation's branding and letter template, suitable for direct issue to constituents and filing in the case record
- **External Connector Framework**: Data from ArcGIS (geographic information systems), Microsoft 365, and SMTP email systems can be synchronised into the CRM, enabling mapping, calendar integration, and inbound email triaging without manual re-entry
- **Multi-Agency Incident Coordination**: Service requests that escalate to incidents can be shared across participating agencies through the platform's inter-agency coordination layer, with visibility controls that respect organisational boundaries
- **Public Budget and Open Data Portals**: Councils can publish service request statistics, resolution times, and category breakdowns to public open data portals, supporting transparency obligations and enabling citizens to see aggregate service performance
- **Form Builder Integration**: Custom intake forms are created through the platform's form builder and embedded in the citizen portal, allowing different service types to capture the precise information needed without generic free-text submissions
- **AI-Assisted Routing**: Classification models trained on historical submissions identify the most likely service category and responsible team for new requests, presenting a suggested routing for staff confirmation rather than forcing manual triage for every submission

## Use Cases

### Pothole and Roads Reporting
A citizen photographs a pothole through the council's mobile-friendly service portal. The form captures the photo, GPS location, and description. The submission is automatically classified as a roads maintenance request, routed to the roads team, and a work order is created for field crews. The citizen receives confirmation and can track progress without calling the council offices.

### Constituent Representation Filing
A councillor's constituency office files a formal representation regarding a planning application delay. The casework system routes it to the planning department, tracks the response deadline, generates a formal written response as a PDF when the department responds, and records the full case thread for the member's records.

### SLA Breach Management
A supervisor reviewing the CRM dashboard sees that six noise complaint requests have exceeded their 5-day SLA. Automated escalation notifications were sent at 3 days; the supervisor can see which cases have not been actioned, reassign them to available staff, and update priorities, all from the management dashboard without opening individual cases.

### Cross-Agency Incident
A flood report submitted through the citizen portal triggers an incident that requires coordination between the council's roads team, the water utility, and the emergency services. The CRM escalates the request to an inter-agency incident, distributes tasks to each body with appropriate visibility controls, and tracks resolution across all parties.

### Open Data Publication
At the end of each quarter, the council's transparency officer publishes a service request performance report to the public open data portal directly from the CRM reporting module, showing request volumes, average resolution times, and SLA compliance by category, meeting statutory transparency requirements without manual report preparation.

## How It Works

```mermaid
flowchart TD
    A[Citizen submits service request\nvia portal or mobile app] --> B[AI Classification\ncategory + routing suggestion]
    B --> C[Staff review and confirm routing]
    C --> D{Escalation needed?}

    D -->|No| E[Assign to team queue\nSLA clock starts]
    D -->|Yes| F[Escalate to incident\nor inter-agency coordination]

    E --> G[Field crew receives work order\non mobile device]
    G --> H[Field crew updates status\nin field]
    H --> I[Citizen receives progress update]
    I --> J{Resolved?}
    J -->|Yes| K[Generate PDF response\nif formal representation]
    J -->|No, SLA breached| L[Escalation notification\nto supervisor]
    K --> M[Close case, record archived]
```

## Integration

The Municipal CRM integrates with the Incident Management module for escalated service requests, the Work Order module for field crew task dispatch, the Form Builder for custom intake form embedding, and the Notifications module for citizen and staff communication. The External Connector Framework synchronises data from ArcGIS for geographic service request mapping, Microsoft 365 for calendar and email integration, and SMTP gateways for inbound email triaging. The Representative Portal surfaces the elected member casework view from the same underlying CRM data, with role-scoped access ensuring members only see their own constituency cases.

## Compliance

- All service requests and case correspondence are retained in the audit trail with timestamps and responsible officer attribution, meeting local authority records management obligations
- PDF response generation uses organisation-controlled letter templates, ensuring official correspondence meets statutory format requirements
- Inter-agency data sharing is governed by explicit visibility controls and sharing agreements configured at the organisation level
- Open data exports are configurable to exclude personally identifiable information, meeting GDPR obligations for public transparency reporting

**Last Reviewed:** 2026-04-14
**Last Updated:** 2026-04-14