The City of Bloomington is focused on delivering equitable and effective services to its 80,000+ residents.

In late 2021, the Information & Technology Services (ITS) Department set out to reduce the burden of applying for city programs—many of which relied on manual, paper-based processes. Instead of reinventing services, Bloomington looked for a digital solution to improve what already worked, remove barriers, and make it easier for everyone to connect with city support.

CiviForm, an open-source platform designed to simplify access to public benefit programs, emerged as the clear fit. The city partnered with Exygy, CiviForm’s product stewards, and Google.org to explore how the tool could be adapted for local needs and used to drive long-term digital transformation grounded in inclusion.

Starting with Collaboration and Flexibility

Bloomington began its journey with CiviForm by learning from early adopters like the City of Seattle. With no formal implementation guide at the time, the city took an adaptive, hands-on approach:

• Kickoff and On-Site Support: A virtual kickoff launched the work in April 2022, followed by a 3-day in-person implementation session with Google.org fellows in May.
• Iterative Setup: Bloomington tailored the deployment to its own needs, hosting CiviForm on a hybrid infrastructure that combined in-house systems with AWS. Integration with the state’s Access Indiana authentication system made Bloomington the first city in Indiana to use the platform this way.
• Tested in the Community: Residents participated in live user testing during the May 2022 visit, helping the team shape a more intuitive and user-friendly application experience from the very beginning.

Greg Overtoom, Assistant Director for Enterprise Applications, noted, "When we did our implementation, there was no playbook, just a lot of energy and excitement, so we made it up as we went along." This flexible approach allowed the team to tailor the process to Bloomington's specific context.

Designing with People in Mind

From the start, the City prioritized equity. The first programs brought onto CiviForm’s Bloomington deployment were intentionally chosen to reach people who needed support the most:

• Utilities Customer Assistance Program
• Parks & Recreation Scholarship
• Surplus Computer Request Program

CiviForm made it easier to apply by replacing manual tasks with a digital experience:

• No more inaccessible PDFs or notarized documents
• No need to travel for in-person submissions
• No application fees
• The ability to reuse application data across programs

This meant more people could apply quickly, easily, and confidently.

Working Across Departments and With the Community

Key to the project’s success was buy-in from across the city:

• Cross-department collaboration: ITS worked closely with departments like Utilities and Parks & Recreation, as well as community partners like South Central Community Action Program (SCCAP).
• Administrative empowerment: 12 Program Administrators manage their programs within CiviForm, with only minimal technical oversight needed from ITS. This is only possible because CiviForm was designed to be easily used by non-technical users.
• Sustainable support: The platform runs smoothly with just 5% of two Application Analysts’ time and light support from one System Administrator. Reducing the barrier to maintenance and support is vital to the long term success and efficacy of government programming. Long-term sustainability is core to the CiviForm value proposition which in-turn allows for continual access to life changing services for residents.