SocietyWorks

WasteWorks

Online domestic, bulky, green garden waste portal for local authorities. Designed with Bromley Council, WasteWorks is a user-centred, front-end domestic waste service that integrates with in-cab systems. Citizens can check bin days, report missed bins, order containers, pay for green or bulky collections and pay for repeat bin collection subscriptions.

Features

  • Residents can check bin collection days and report missed bins
  • Take requests for assisted collections and new or extra containers
  • Take payments/direct debits for green or bulky waste subscriptions
  • API integration with all major in-cab systems and payment providers
  • Define time-based reporting windows to limit citizen reporting
  • Keep citizens informed on their waste service with updates
  • Adjust messaging within templated responses to improve communication
  • Case management for customer services, with a CRM workflow
  • Track contractor service levels, identify trends with dashboards and heatmap
  • Single sign-on integration for staff accounts and citizens

Benefits

  • Reduces the burden on customer service teams through integrations
  • Manage expectations with templated responses and automatic updates
  • Take payments online directly without interrupting the service workflow
  • Streamline the customer journey by keeping everything under one roof
  • Optimised for desktop or mobile devices, with offline support
  • User-centred, co-designed approach, enabling you to grow with the service
  • Customer services can create reports/set up subscriptions for citizens
  • Facilitates legacy software removal, helps you to go paper-free
  • Improve transparency and council reputation
  • Helps councils achieve lower operating costs through channel shift

Pricing

£12,000 to £46,000 an instance a year

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at enquiries@societyworks.org. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

9 0 9 1 1 8 7 9 3 7 3 0 8 6 6

Contact

SocietyWorks Amelia Nicholas
Telephone: 020 3287 9859
Email: enquiries@societyworks.org

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
Public cloud
Service constraints
No
System requirements
None

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
Within normal working hours our official response rate is 4 hours
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
Phone support
No
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
Yes, at extra cost
Support levels
We offer a single support level as defined in our SLA.

Critical: requests for errors resulting in non-availability of the service, e.g. the URL returns an HTTP error code 500. Resolution within three days.

Non-Critical: minor bugs that do not substantially affect the service, or minor feature/ content adjustment requests.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
Once you’re signed up, we’ll contact you to arrange a kickoff call where you’ll be introduced to your dedicated project team. During the meeting you’ll be taken through an onboarding exercise where we will explain how we will work together through the project delivery phase, getting communications platforms in place to ensure ongoing engagement, and we can learn more about the problems you’re trying to solve and how we can help.

We will cover, amongst other things:

The system(s) you want to integrate with
Templates and/or style guides so that WasteWorks can adhere to your website’s existing look and feel
The type of bin requests citizens can make
Payment gateway information
Any specific content that needs to be added to the FAQs for your installation
Access to test systems
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
At the termination of the agreement the customer may choose to issue a transfer request which grants the customer sufficient data and rights to operate the service themselves or with a third party. This will be provided in the most appropriate format for ongoing usage.
End-of-contract process
Either party can terminate service by giving notice to the other that service will cease at the end of the day before an anniversary of the agreement start date. Any notice must be given no less than six (6) weeks before an anniversary of the agreement start date.
At the termination of the agreement the customer may choose to issue a transfer request which grants the customer sufficient data and rights to operate the service themselves or with a third party.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
  • Opera
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
The service is fully responsive thus apart from layout there are no differences in functionality.
Service interface
No
User support accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
Our services can send and receive data from and to your systems by connecting to your systems’ API key
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
API sandbox or test environment
Yes
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
Buyers can customise the look and feel of our service to meet their brand guidelines and can also customise the workflow and the reporting categories through the admin interface.

Scaling

Independence of resources
Monitoring is in place to ensure that if there is any abnormal load or behaviour on any account a range of measures can be implemented to ensure service levels. These include but are not limited to the ability to rate limit, block or ban traffic sources.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
Metrics provided include (but are not limited to)

Unique users
New users
Returning users
Number of reports
Number of closed/open reports in a time period
Average time to report closed
Number of reports by category
Number of reports by location
Numbers of reports by category by ward
Reporting types
Real-time dashboards
Reporting types
Real-time dashboards

Resellers

Supplier type
Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Staff screening not performed
Government security clearance
None

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
  • United Kingdom
  • Other locations
User control over data storage and processing locations
Yes
Datacentre security standards
Managed by a third party
Penetration testing frequency
At least once a year
Penetration testing approach
‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
Protecting data at rest
Physical access control, complying with another standard
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
Equipment disposal approach
A third-party destruction service

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
WasteWorks provides a data export option that allows users to export CSV without intervention from us. If users require additional formats this can be facilitated.
Data export formats
CSV
Data import formats
CSV

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Data protection within supplier network
TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
Our service levels etc are available under the 'Service Level Agreement' heading of the Terms & Conditions document attached.
Approach to resilience
Our systems are distributed between multiple data centres for redundancy. Back-end database systems have streaming replication to hot standby instances and back-end file storage is similarly redundant. Systems are monitored for availability, performance and capacity from a remote location 24/7/365.
Outage reporting
Services outages are reported via email and major issues are covered on the SocietyWorks blog.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Username and passwords with two-factor authentication.
Access restriction testing frequency
At least once a year
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
User-defined
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
User-defined
How long system logs are stored for
Between 1 month and 6 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
No
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Cyber essentials
Yes
Cyber essentials plus
No
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
Cyber Essentials https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/cyberessentials/search (search for SocietyWorks)

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
No
Security governance approach
SocietyWorks is a wholly owned subsidiary of mySociety. Information is key to mySociety's continuing business. The management of it is the responsibility of all users of the systems which mySociety provide. All information must only be used for its intended and stated purpose. Information must be protected from its creation, during its useful life, and through its authorised disposal. All information should be maintained in a secure and reliable manner.

Compliance with applicable legislation is paramount, and all information must be processed, maintained and disposed of in accordance with the laws relevant to the jurisdiction.
Information security policies and processes
We maintain a Security Management Plan that covers our approach to security. This can be provided on request.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach
We operate automated configuration management of our systems using Puppet. This ensures that all our systems are kept in a consistent state. The configuration is kept in version control.

Configuration and code changes are subject to peer-review via pull requests and reviews against our git repositories. Application code is subject to automated testing and tests must pass before merge and deployment takes place.
Vulnerability management type
Supplier-defined controls
Vulnerability management approach
For core system software we run daily checks for security updates and these are usually applied within 1 business day. We have procedures in place for managing emergency patching for remotely exploitable zero-day vulnerabilities should they be discovered in any system components.

Where appropriate automated monitoring of codebase dependencies is enabled.
Protective monitoring type
Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach
We check daily for security patches/updates and apply these.

We have real-time monitoring that detects common attacks and automatically blocks suspicious activity.

We monitor our SSL certificates and have a fully automated system for renewals.
Incident management type
Supplier-defined controls
Incident management approach
We record logs for major incidents to capture actions and details and then raise appropriate issue tickets once root cause is established or to implement changes based on lessons-learned.

Users can report issues via the usual support channels and we provide incident reports via our blog.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Social Value

Fighting climate change

Fighting climate change

SocietyWorks is a wholly owned subsidiary of the charity mySociety, together they form a unique not for profit group providing public benefit through the development of digital civic services. SocietyWorks' profits are donated to mySociety as unrestricted funds supporting technology, research and data that is used openly and for free to empower citizens to engage more actively within society.

By supporting our commercial work on SocietyWorks, councils are able to support mySociety’s programme of work accelerating the local response in the UK to the climate emergency. mySociety created the digital platform to support the UK's national Climate Assembly, and more recently has been working with Climate Emergency UK to build the Climate Action Plans Explorer and Climate Action Plan Scorecards, both of which help citizens and councils to more easily access and understand the response in their local area to the climate crisis, and compare what other councils with a similar responsibility are doing.
Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity

SocietyWorks is a wholly owned subsidiary of the charity mySociety, together they form a unique not for profit group providing public benefit through the development of digital civic services. SocietyWorks' profits are donated to mySociety as unrestricted funds supporting technology, research and data that is used openly and for free to empower citizens to engage more actively within society.

By supporting our commercial work on SocietyWorks, councils are supporting mySociety’s transparency, democracy and community projects such as its Open Source FOI platform which enables citizens to operate FOI sites in countries around the world. Freedom of Information is a citizen’s right, and a tool by which we can monitor what publicly-funded bodies are doing on our behalf. mySociety’s FOI tools are designed to clarify and simplify the process. They help anyone—experienced or not—to make a request, quickly and simply.

Pricing

Price
£12,000 to £46,000 an instance a year
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
No

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at enquiries@societyworks.org. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.