“Our mission is to pursue and support innovation designed to enhance the delivery of public services, conduct strategic data analysis to support informed decision, and create unique and personal customer experiences,” said Lauren Shatto, Director of the Innovation and Strategy Department for the City of Plant City.
Shatto began her employment with Plant City nine years ago as an accountant. She continued to develop her professional knowledge and learned about Plant City operations as she moved to different roles. “I think this is one of the reasons why so many people love the City,” she said. “They say they are standing behind a principle—investing in their employees, believing in their employees. I feel like I am one of the recipients of that. The City is such a great place to work.”
Her Department’s three areas of focus are innovation, strategy, and community engagement. The team is continually looking to the future—what new ideas are out there, what can be well-applied to Plant City, and the strategy of how to implement an innovation. The Innovation and Strategy team fixates on what is best for the City, and for their customers—Plant City residents who use City services. Before kicking off an upgrade to a system or process, the team works hard to get customer input up front, throughout the project, and responses at the end. “It’s a non-stop process with innovation,” Shatto said. “You actually have to see a process. When you implement it, you have to make sure that same cycle is constantly being successful, because you might have to change it based off of what you see or what feedback you get. We always come back to that community engagement portion.”
One recent successful innovation was the launch of the My Plant City App in February 2023. It can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. “We are very proud of that app,” Shatto commented. “We were excited to launch it.” Using the app, customers can have links to the City of Plant City web site to pay a bill, among other things. Also, if users are out and about in the City and see something that needs to be addressed, they can open the app, click “Service Request,” and enter information that will be routed to the appropriate staff.
For this team, innovations often begin as conversations with staff or Plant City residents. Someone may say something like, “I wish this would flow a little bit more smoothly.” Comments such as this are a flag for the team to go over the process in question, break it down, create a flow chart of it, and see where it can be improved. A solution could be technological, or it could be changing the process. In all cases, the team works with other staff and customers to find ways for the process to be handled more effectively and efficiently. “You have to have both,” Shatto said.
To help make things better for Plant City residents, Innovation and Strategy keeps a log of interactions with Plant Citians including requests, questions about services, and complaints. The team wants people to call in to talk to them. They want customers to feel like they were listened to, and that someone followed up with them afterwards. “We want them to feel like they were taken care of,” Shatto said. “I want our staff to be that person for the community.” The staff also actively monitors social media to help the team identify areas that could be better.
One result of listening is a feature added in April 2024—dashboards on the City website. The dashboards monitor and report things like the number of calls that are handled by the Plant City Police Department, by Fire Rescue, and activity at Bruton Memorial Library. Innovation and Strategy updates the data monthly.
“I see my Department in the future really focusing on continuous development and improvement,” Shatto concluded. “Everything we do, we try to look at it holistically—how it’s going to affect the city overall. And we also are looking at the customer side. So, we give continued effort to listen to what our customers want, and do our best to fulfill what they need.”