Case Study: City of Portland streamlines online civic services and automates workflows with GovOS

How the Portland Water Bureau Uses Triggers, Tags and Stages to Help Improve the Efficiency of Online Civic Services

Portland Water Bureau, serving about a million people daily, partnered with GovOS Studio’s Utilities Package to tackle paper-heavy, manual workflows across services like community garden hose-nozzle orders, toilet rebates, and a complex water leak repair program. Residential Water Efficiency Coordinator Penny Milton needed a way to collect richer customer data, customize follow-up, and manage multi-step approvals and partner referrals without spending hours on manual logging and emails.

Using GovOS Studio’s Triggers, Tags and Stages, Portland automated tagging based on form responses, sent targeted follow-up emails, and moved submissions through approval stages with automated staff assignments and referrals. The result: significant time savings for staff, better community engagement (over half of volunteers requested more information), faster approvals and handoffs to partners, and a scalable workflow ready for partner user logins and further automation.

City of Portland

Penny Milton

Portland Water Bureau