CASE STUDY | GOVERNMENT
Name: Wellington City Council
Headquarters: Wellington, New Zealand
Web: https://wellington.govt.nz/
Name: Desktop Imaging
Headquarters: Wellington, New Zealand
When the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) introduced sweeping changes to New Zealand’s Rates Rebate program, it dramatically shifted a sizable administrative burden to local councils—creating an administrative crisis. To quickly adapt to these regulatory changes, Wellington City Council selected a purpose-built automation tool to process hundreds of application forms automatically, with immediate success.
In 2025, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) introduced significant changes to New Zealand’s Rates Rebate program, requiring local councils to take on the burden of a number of application processing challenges that included:
For Wellington City Council, these changes meant staff would need to manually validate, calculate, enter, and report on thousands of annual applications—a massive administrative burden that would divert resources from other critical services.
Wellington City Council selected an ABBYY partner, Desktop Imaging, to solve the challenges. Desktop Imaging’s DI Automation Rates Rebate Service is built on ABBYY’s intelligent document processing technology. It’s the only current purpose-built automation solution specifically designed for New Zealand councils’ rates rebate processing needs.
Key service components:
Pay-per-application model delivers immediate value
With no upfront investment, no software licenses, and no infrastructure costs, Wellington City Council only pays for what they process. Monthly costs are predictable, scalable, and align directly with application volumes.
Implementation in days, not months
Unlike traditional software implementations, there was no software installation, no infrastructure investment, no lengthy project timelines—just immediate processing capability when Wellington City Council needed it most.
Since going live in July 2025, Wellington City Council has achieved seamless processing of applications— from day one that serves as a model for all City Councils to adopt throughout New Zealand.
