Example Digital Service Team

How the City of South Bend, IN built and scaled a centralized digital service function through organizational transformation, service design, and strategic IT integration.

South Bend, IN Digital Services

Overview

Government level	Local (city)
Year formed	2018
Team framework	Enterprise (city-wide shared service)
Mandate and structure	No formal mandate, long-term goals connected to operational support
Funding model	Gradual centralization of tech funding split between departments through a priority-based budgeting approach

Background

Over the past decade, the City of South Bend has undergone a significant transformation in how it organizes and delivers technology and digital services. What began as an effort to modernize and centralize IT evolved into a broader strategy focused on innovation, digital service delivery, and data-driven improvement. The following timeline highlights key organizational changes, leadership transitions, and the factors that shaped the city's current technology structure.

Organizational evolution timeline

• 2013: Mayor hires a contractor to serve as Innovation Director.

• 2015: Role becomes Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) and assumes oversight of the Information Technology office within Administration and Finance.

• 2016–2018: Innovation functions are formalized into dedicated groups:

  • Applications and Business Analytics

  • Infrastructure and Service Maintenance

• 2018: Original CIO departs and a new CIO is hired.

• 2024: The city launches a broader digital services initiative.

  • Subsequent reorganization: A third vertical, Digital Services, is established.

    • Key leadership roles included the Director of Digital Services and Chief Digital Officer.

Key drivers for reorganization

• Capacity constraints and broad, unrelated responsibilities contributed to staff turnover.

• Leadership reviewed services, projects, and operational responsibilities across the organization and created the Digital Services function to better distribute work and align resources.

Additional organizational context

• The original Business Analytics group evolved into a dedicated Data & Performance function focused on performance management and process improvement.

• Historically, IT operations were decentralized across city departments. One of the original CIO's primary goals was to establish a centralized, citywide IT function.

Organization & team structure

Current org structure

Divisions include:

• Centralized Infrastructure, Project Management, and Services

• Performance & Innovation

• Digital Services

• Digital Integrations and Development

• Customer Services & Success

The Digital Services team sits within centralized IT under the Digital vertical.

The Customer Services & Success is also centralized within IT. It serves as a central point for resident questions and service requests, helping departments work from consistent information about customer needs and service activity.

Funding model

Building the team required significant political capital and justification, especially when adding staff.

Technical funding that previously existed in other departmental budgets was gradually reallocated into the centralized organization. However:

• The team does not fully control its own budget size.

• It does not necessarily have a dedicated budget line.

• Leadership can make recommendations but cannot easily expand or reduce funding independently.

The team has tripled in size since its formation, though leadership still feels the organization is operating at roughly half the staffing level it truly needs.

Enterprise team structure

Strong centralized infrastructure (enterprise) was identified as a key enabler of Digital Services' success. Key observations included:

• Foundational systems matter more than where a team sits in the organization.

• Organizational flexibility allows leaders to assign the right people to the right problems regardless of departmental boundaries.

• Clean, reliable data and adequate staffing are more important than where a team sits on an organizational chart.

• Placement inside or outside of IT can significantly affect implementation, particularly during service launch and delivery.

• Digital communications and marketing often become politically sensitive, which can limit a digital services team's authority even when it owns the underlying tools.

Advice & lessons learned

The organization takes a deliberate approach to building new tools, recognizing that each system requires ongoing support and maintenance throughout its lifecycle.

As a result, the team typically engages when internal customers have clearly defined needs and are ready to partner on solutions.

Additional lessons learned:

• “Don’t promise the moon.” Underpromise and over deliver.

• Own process improvement work whenever possible and make that ownership clear across the organization.

• Position the team as thought partners in user experience and service delivery.

• Neutrality helped the team successfully facilitate conversations across departments.

• Guidance from Denver’s PEAK Academy influenced some of their process improvement work.

• Ownership is important because many departments do not want to own ongoing operational improvements.

Team composition & capabilities

Digital Services housed the team’s product and design roles, while developers sat within a separate Applications function under the same Chief Digital Officer. Close collaboration across these groups enabled more effective delivery. Leadership also valued critical thinking, not just technical skills, when hiring.

Foundational engineering capacity was viewed as particularly important, including roles such as:

• Platform or base engineer

• Front-end engineer

Build engineering capacity into the team early so it can test ideas, deliver solutions, and maintain them after launch.