Why your content is now your customer service

We often talk about “digital transformation” in the public sector as a future destination, a milestone on a road map. But if 2025 and early 2026 have taught us anything, it’s that for the residents and communities you serve, that destination has already been reached. They’re already there, and they’re waiting for you to catch up.

The data is now undeniable: there has been a significant shift in how residents consume information, build trust, and ultimately, how they expect to engage with essential services like police forces and local councils. The “channel shift” towards a more digital way of communicating, is no longer a strategic option, it’s an absolute must have.

At Orlo, we’ve always monitored the “entry points” of community engagement. Historically, these were simple: a phone number, an email address, or a physical desk. Today, the entry point is content.

According to Ofcom’s News Consumption Report 2024, 52% of UK adults now use social media as their primary news source. In the 16–24 age bracket, this explodes to 82%. This isn’t just passive scrolling; it is active information seeking.

For me, this creates a fascinating but challenging consumer journey. When a resident sees a post about local disruption, a safety alert, or a service change on Facebook or X, their expectation isn’t to then pivot to a different channel (like a 10-minute wait on 101) to ask a question. Their expectation is convenience: to respond, comment, message, or DM right where they already are.

We are seeing a convergence of information delivery and service delivery, fuelled by a 2026 community mindset that prioritises immediacy, accuracy, and convenience.

Perhaps nowhere is this shift more visible than in policing. The data confirms an explosion of social media data that forces must now manage.

During the periods of public unrest in the UK in 2024, social media wasn’t just a communication tool, it was the active operational environment. Forces that succeeded were those that treated platforms like X as primary real-time communication engines.

However, the lack of trust that communities have in the public sector creates a nuanced challenge. Research in 2025 shows a “fragmentation” of trust. While reach is high, citizens are often more critical of content on social platforms than on traditional broadcasts. They are paradoxically using social media more while trusting it slightly less.

This is precisely why we developed the Orlo platform: to give public sector organisations the tools to build that trust. We create a “single source of truth,” a hub that centralises inbound engagement from DMs and comments to WhatsApp messages creating a unified inbox that can be managed with the same rigour as a traditional call center.

For the 18–34 demographic, traditional channels are not “slow”, they are obsolete. The data is stark. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are the new “hubs,” outranking and outpacing traditional .gov websites.

To bridge this gap, we must rethink what interaction actually means. Research confirms that online participation, whether a “like,” a comment, or a direct report, is far more likely because the threshold for effort is near zero.

But “easy” and “simple” interaction cannot mean un-managed. To handle this much digital data, we know you need better tools behind the scenes. We see this in the current Blue Light Commercial (BLC) framework on social media management, which highlights that this data now demands the same governance, recording, and reporting standards as a 999 or 101 call.

85% of public sector tech leaders are now prioritising emerging technologies over legacy systems, specifically to meet these consumer-centric expectations. The strategy is moving toward digital-first, high-trust integration.

At Orlo, our goal isn’t just to help you manage a social media inbox. We are building the infrastructure that transforms these high-volume interactions into actionable insights and trusted, formal engagements.

The shift has already happened. The conversation is happening. The data is waiting. The question for my fellow technology leaders: Are we set up to join it?