Perry Group Digital Academy

Digital for Municipal Leaders 

We have developed a 4-part digital education program for leaders and managers in municipal organizations.

The course is focused purely on municipal audiences. It is designed to help leaders think more digitally and what it means to deliver services to citizens in the age of the smartphone and the internet, and to become better commissioners of work designed to deliver digital services. 

The sessions are led by multiple senior Perry Group consultants, all of whom have extensive experience as CIO’s and IT leaders who have led technology and digital transformation in the municipal setting. The sessions are typically half-day, run through Teams/Zoom, and delivered to groups inside a single municipality at a time.

We aim for cohorts of 10-12 to ensure that everyone gets a chance to participate in the valuable discussion.


Course Overview

In the course, we will: 

  • Discuss digital and its impact on municipal service delivery.  

  • Identify what marks out good digital services and how leaders can create the conditions that can help their teams build great digital services.  

  • Help leaders develop a digital mission for themselves and their teams.  

  • Discuss proven approaches and methods that can deliver better technology and digital project outcomes.  

  • Talk about how to adopt a more product (over project) centric approach and how to launch and continuously improve digital services. 


Module Overview 

Module 1: Inspire to Aspire

  • Introduction to Digital – What is digital and what does it mean for you as leaders? 

  • What is a service?  

  • What makes a service “good” and “bad”?  

  • What are the leaders in municipal digital doing that we can learn from? 

  • What does it mean to be “digitally transformed”? 

  • The digital mission for municipalities. 

Module 2: Set your Digital Vision 

  • How to set your personal vision and develop your team’s digital mission. 

  • How to sell your vision to your team and overcome barriers. 

  • How to identify and select opportunities for digital transformation. 

  • The importance of Service Ownership and service accountability. 

  • Using “Good Service Principles” to assess your services. 

  • How to empower your team. 

  • Approaches to funding digital delivery. 

Module 3: Design and Deliver

  • How to build the right team. 

  • How to employ design thinking to design complete services. 

  • Why and how to use important tools and techniques such as: User Research, Customer Journey Mapping, Business Process Optimization. 

  • How to use the “Discovery – Alpha – Beta – Launch” approach to focus on service and process first. 

  • How to promote digital service adoption / uptake. 

  • How to listen and learn from users. 

Module 4: Operate and Iterate 

  • How to adopt a product mindset to continuous improvement of services. 

  • How to measure and track outcomes. 

  • How to promote uptake of digital services. 

  • Open discussion, next steps and making your personal commitment. 


Course Concepts

  • Estimating Project Size / Effort

  • Budget and Funding

  • Prioritization

  • Change Management Planning and Execution

  • Day in the Life

  • Digital Architecture

  • Service Patterns

  • Good Services

  • Design Approach – Discovery, Alpha, Beta, Live

  • Digital Service Standard

  • Service Owner

  • Directly Responsible Individual

  • Agile

  • Kanban, Sprints, Retrospectives

  • Product Management

  • 5 Why’s

  • Avoiding Fake Digital

  • Compounding Benefits – Building on Previous

  • Defining Services

  • Service Ownership

  • Collaboration – Building your Coalition

  • Environmental Scan – Looking & Learning from Leaders

  • Service Inventory

  • Basic Digital Maturity Assessment

  • Service Prioritization

  • Talking to Customers – Journey Mapping

  • Talking to your Team

  • Business Process Optimization

  • Service Design

  • Digital Architecture


If you are interested in finding out more you can grab our slides for the following modules to see the sort of content and discussions that we create/stimulate.

Module A - Inspire to Aspire

Module B - Set Your Digital Vision

Module C - Design and Deliver

Module D - Operate and Iterate

If you’d like to discuss further, hit the button below.