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Richland staff demos 'My Account' utility portal; council raises data and translation concerns
Summary
City staff previewed a new online utility portal ("My Account") that centralizes billing, usage data, service requests and alerts. Council members praised functionality but raised questions about data hosting, backups and use of Google Translate on pages that could include personal information.
City staff demonstrated a new utility customer portal called "My Account" designed to consolidate billing, usage data, service requests and customer communications for Richland utility customers.
Drew (city staff) led a live demo of the portal’s test site, showing account creation, the dashboard, the ability to link multiple meters, usage charts and customizable alerts for bills, leaks or consumption thresholds. He said the portal lets customers create accounts tied to existing account numbers, view historical usage, download bills as PDFs and enroll in paperless billing or autopay. Drew described the portal as a security and privacy improvement compared with the previous practice of exchanging documents by email.
"This is a big upgrade from a security and privacy standpoint for us because up to this point, a lot of material that's transmitted between customers and customer service is done via email," Drew said during the demonstration.
Key features demonstrated: • Account creation that links to the customer account number printed on bills…
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