Digital Alert and Payment of Parking Fines - Milan
Milan (Italy)
Since 2018, the Municipality of Milan has introduced a change in the process applied to fines issued for unpaid or unauthorized parking in the city area.
The main reason for the change was to reduce the number of paper sheets previously needed to issue fines to cars, in favor of a completely digital management of the notification and the payment of the fees.
Through the Digital Citizen Folder App, all citizens can register their license plates, be immediately notified in case of a fine, and have a 5-day period to pay for a reduced amount.
This reduction is an option offered by the Municipality, which with the digital process can reduce the cost of delivering fines by post. People who do not use the app will receive the fine by post and they will be surcharged (as before) of addisional sending costs.
The latest version of the mobile application has added the possibility of registering plate numbers of cars not owned by citizens but at their disposal (e.g. rental cars, leasing cars, other owners ones, etc.).
This improvement is explained by the high number of requests received by the support center from users of the app.
The process described above, which was initially released on the mobile application, will soon be released on the website version of the Digital Citizen Folder. The website version is currently under review and subject to user testing.
As a result, citizens will have easy access to the payment of parking fines through all the channels offered by the Municipality.
The features provided and integrated in the Citizen Folder come directly from user feedback and requests sent to the support centre. For istance, the new feature of registering the number plates of leased, rental and other owners' cars has been one of the most requested features since the introduction of the digital process for parking fines.
The Municipality has drastically reduced the costs of sending fines by post.
The introduction of the feature on the website is intended to allow citizens who are not interested in using the mobile app to pay parking fines, still at a reduced rate.
The current feature being added to the website is being tested internally with employees of the Municipality before being released to the public. Different UX methods have been applied.
Ongoing feedback from users of the website and the app provides suggestions for improvement and helps to design a better user experience.