Major Metropolitan City Implements FormAssembly to Improve City-Wide Data Collection

Case Study Snapshot

Meet Andres, Information Security Manager in a major metropolitan city. This city is among the largest in the country and is home to several million individuals. A city of this size is operated by hundreds of full-time staff members, a city council of over 50 officials, and a dozen other elected representatives. In Andres’ department, there are over 100 full-time staff members dedicated to overseeing the Information Technology & Telecommunications initiatives of the city and its entities.

*Disclaimer: Although this case study contains factual numbers and legitimate use cases from a FormAssembly customer, in order to retain customer privacy, the names and locations are confidential. The form advocate’s name and image have also been changed to retain customer privacy.

Due to the size and vastness of the city’s organization, Andres shared that there had been security and compliance complications with a vendor in the past and that all existing web forms would need to be replaced.

Within the year and a half, before the city implemented FormAssembly, staff had nearly 3,000 web forms in use, and one form had received more than 105,000 submissions. Moving forward, the city anticipated 1-2 million yearly submissions.  Frustrated with the amount of time staff spent on data collection and form building for all of the city’s departments, Andres sought a solution that was reliable, user-friendly, and secure.

Andres found FormAssembly’s Government Cloud package, the only form builder and data collection platform on the FedRAMP marketplace, to fill the compliance and usability gaps he was searching for. Outlined below, he shares the progress and changes that the city has seen since investing in FormAssembly as their one-stop solution for secure data collection.

How is FormAssembly changing data collection in municipal agencies within local government?

• Secure and reliable data collection (FedRAMP Ready)
• Streamlined processes
• Saving staff time and resources
• Cross-departmental usability
• User-friendly templates, connectors, and integrations
• Eliminating person-to-person contact and paper waste

Secure and Reliable Data Collection

A governing body of millions simply cannot afford to risk security and compliance issues, specifically with sensitive information like tax documents and rent applications. FormAssembly offers state-of-the-art security and compliance features, including HIPAA compliance, PCI DSS Level 1 certification, FedRAMP readiness, encryption at rest and in transit, and more. With these high standards of security and compliance, government agencies are able to maintain peace of mind while collecting large amounts of sensitive data.

Streamlined Processes

FormAssembly has several key features that simplify data collection across government agencies. These key features were identified as being helpful for the city, given that they span across multiple departments and have over 100 employees:

• The ability to grant access to multiple forms and form owners in one program
• Trustworthy and reliable integrations that make it easy to house and organize sensitive data
• Payment connectors like Stripe, PayPal, and iATS collect, store, and process payment information
• Pre-built form templates
• An Implementation Services team with knowledgeable specialists that can provide onboarding assistance, training, support, and more

Saving Time and Resources

The staff employed by local governments have the large and important job of serving their communities through many outlets. FormAssembly provides these staff members with a solution that prevents them from spending hours creating forms by hand, manually inputting and organizing data, or collecting information over the phone. On average, the FormAssembly customer reported spending 55 hours weekly on manual data entry and form building. Our simple tool puts precious time back into their day and back into their community. Additionally, FormAssembly customers shared that employees manually imputing data and building forms were paid an average of $26.60 per hour. This means by investing in FormAssembly they were not only saving 2,860 employee hours yearly, but also $76,076. 

For large government entities like this, the switch to FormAssembly doesn’t happen overnight, but it has proven to be effective. The city has now streamlined processes for more than 12 departments, created user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing forms, and is able to rely on FormAssembly for all of its secure, powerful data collection needs. By replacing the 100-person IT team with 300 FormAssembly licensed users, the results that city staff is seeing in less than a year have been more than enough to reassure them of their decision. With 40+ hours of consulting calls to help the city’s 300 licensed users get to know the product, the transition was much easier for the team than anticipated.

Given all the necessary knowledge through training, the employees of this large city are able to utilize all of FormAssembly’s capabilities to the fullest, and they are also able to train newly onboarded employees to do the same. Freeing up 100 full-time employees to direct their attention to other pressing matters will not only help them improve and expand in departments that were not previously given the necessary attention, but it will also ease the frustrations of the IT staff that were putting so much time and effort into data collection and online forms. FormAssembly has provided much-needed relief during unprecedented times and has empowered the city team to become better stewards of the data they collect.