Questions & Answers
Frequently asked questions
Answers to the questions we hear most from municipal decision-makers, IT teams, clerks, and privacy officers evaluating Civic Digital Identity.
Civic Digital Identity is a unified citizen account platform that replaces the 4–7 separate login systems most municipalities operate. Unlike a traditional portal that serves a single department, Civic Digital Identity provides a single account spanning all municipal services — taxes, utilities, permits, recreation, waste, animals, and more — with a personalized My Civic Dashboard, progressive identity verification, CASL-compliant notifications, digital forms, and consolidated payments. It is purpose-built for Canadian municipal privacy and accessibility law.
The platform integrates with all Civic Suite modules: Property Tax & Assessment, Utility Billing, Recreation & Community Programs, Permits & Licensing, Work Orders & Service Requests, Customer Relationship Management, Asset & Infrastructure Management, and GIS & Spatial. Third-party integrations are supported through REST APIs, SAML 2.0, OpenID Connect, and webhooks. The My Civic Dashboard presents data from all connected services in a single resident view.
Progressive registration starts with minimal friction — name, email, and password create a Basic-tier account sufficient for browsing and general inquiries. When a resident attempts a higher-security operation (viewing tax account, making a payment), the system prompts for identity verification. Three verification pathways accommodate all residents: AI-powered photo ID, knowledge-based municipal data challenges, and in-person service counter verification. Verification upgrades the account tier immediately.
Civic Digital Identity is designed for Canadian municipalities from 5,000 to 100,000+ residents. The microservices architecture scales horizontally — each service (identity, portal, forms, notifications, payments) scales independently based on demand. Performance benchmarks are validated at 50,000 concurrent sessions and 500,000+ citizen accounts.
Yes. Every deployment includes a perpetual source code licence. Your municipality can inspect, modify, and extend any component of the platform without vendor permission. This eliminates vendor lock-in and ensures your community's identity platform belongs to your community. Modifications can be maintained as municipality-specific forks or contributed back to the core platform.
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