Make Toronto Digitally Native

Summary

Toronto’s digital services remain fragmented, forcing residents and businesses to navigate multiple portals and paper processes for basic tasks. This approach wastes time, creates errors, and erodes trust in City Hall.

This memo proposes a new model: making Toronto observable, so city data is open by default and services are transparent and measurable in real time; programmable, so core functions like payments, permits, and licenses can be securely accessed by others; and digitally native, so services are designed for the online world first, with automation, instant confirmation, and consistent identity. An AI interface should be added across all services to guide residents in plain language, support staff, and make the system intuitive to navigate.

To achieve this, four reforms are required: (1) create a unified digital platform for residents and businesses; (2) redesign workflows to be faster, simpler, and automation-ready; (3) open data and APIs to enable innovation inside and outside City Hall; and (4) embed AI to make services adaptive and user-friendly.

Bold target: Within three years, move 80% of city transactions onto this unified, AI-ready digital platform — reducing costs, improving accountability, and delivering a modern government residents can trust.

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Background & Motivation

Toronto is home to one of the world’s largest technology sectors, yet the city’s digital services are still built on a fragmented, analog foundation. Residents and businesses regularly face a patchwork of portals, paper forms, and outdated processes when dealing with City Hall. Paying property taxes, declaring a home’s occupancy status, renewing a permit, or filing a 311 request all require separate logins, different formats, and often long waits for confirmation. The experience is inconsistent and confusing, leaving people to navigate City Hall’s internal silos on their own.

The costs are visible in the failures. The rollout of the Vacant Home Tax in 2023 is the clearest example. Homeowners were required to declare their property status online, but the portal was poorly designed, confusing, and error-prone. Residents received incorrect bills, and within two days the city logged tens of thousands of complaints¹. Staff were diverted en masse to resolve problems that should never have arisen. 

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MyToronto Pay, launched to consolidate tax, utility, and parking payments, initially showed the promise of integration—an $11 million projected return on investment over five years—but collapsed after vendor disputes². The lesson is consistent: siloed, vendor-driven projects without a citywide vision don’t last, and every failure deepens public frustration.

By comparison, global leaders show the payoff of treating digital as the default. Estonia rebuilt its services around a national digital ID and a “once-only” rule: citizens never provide the same information twice³. Filing taxes takes minutes, not hours, and digital signatures alone save 2 percent of GDP annually. Singapore’s OneService app gives residents a single channel for every issue, from broken streetlights to missed garbage, while its GoBusiness portal integrates 300 services so entrepreneurs can secure permits and approvals in under a day. Both demonstrate what happens when governments build around the user: faster, cheaper, and more trusted services.

Toronto has not yet made that leap. Instead of one digital front door, it has dozens, leaving residents to guess which one to knock on. Departments maintain separate databases and repeatedly ask citizens for the same details. Processes that could be instant—like renewing a standard permit—are still reviewed manually. Staff spend their time processing paperwork and phone calls that digital systems could handle automatically. Research consistently shows that online transactions are up to 95 percent cheaper than in-person or phone interactions⁴, yet Toronto continues to carry the costs of duplication.

The path forward is clear. Toronto must become a city that is observable, programmable, and digitally native. To be observable is to make services transparent in real time, through open data and APIs that let residents, policymakers, and civic technologists see how services are performing and where bottlenecks exist. To be programmable is to expose the city’s core functions—payments, permits, licenses—so that innovators can build tools and services directly on top of civic infrastructure. To be digitally native is to design services for the online world first, with single sign-on, instant confirmation, and workflows that default to automation. These principles shift Toronto from a collection of disconnected apps to a true digital platform.

This ambition matters even more as AI reshapes user expectations. People increasingly expect to ask questions in plain language and get authoritative answers instantly. Many of Toronto’s daily frustrations—confusing forms, unclear routing, inconsistent responses—are exactly the kinds of problems AI can help resolve⁵. Yet the city restricts staff from using AI tools, missing an opportunity to improve both speed and quality. Rebuilding services so they are open to AI navigation would allow residents to “ask the city a question” and receive a reliable answer, while giving staff modern tools to do their work more effectively.

Toronto also has the civic energy to make this work. For more than a decade, one of North America’s most active civic tech communities has met weekly to explore how to improve city services. These developers, data engineers, and engaged residents are ready to help—but without open data or programmable services, their contributions are confined to the margins. If City Hall builds the right platform, this community will bring its energy inside the tent.

The payoff is not just efficiency. By giving machines the repetitive tasks they are good at, Toronto can free its public servants to focus on the work only people can do: supporting vulnerable residents, sustaining culture, and nurturing creativity. Digital reform, in this sense, is about more than cheaper transactions. It is about reimagining what government can mean in a 21st-century city: transparent, user-friendly, and built to amplify the strengths of its people.

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Real-World Solutions

Estonia — Digital ID and “Once-Only” Data
After independence in the 1990s, Estonia rebuilt its government on a digital foundation. Every resident receives a secure digital ID, which allows access to 100% of public services online. Citizens never provide the same information twice: if one agency already has your address or tax number, another can retrieve it securely through the national X-Road data exchange. Routine tasks that once took days now take minutes. Filing taxes takes about three minutes; registering a company can be done online in under a day. The efficiencies are huge: digital signatures alone save the equivalent of 2% of GDP every year⁶. Estonia proves that secure identity and integrated data can transform both user experience and government efficiency.

Singapore — OneService and GoBusiness
Singapore has pursued a “No Wrong Door” philosophy, ensuring residents never need to know which agency handles their issue. The OneService app lets anyone report problems—from potholes to noise complaints—through a single channel, with the system automatically routing the request to the right department⁷. Residents get real-time status updates instead of wondering if their issue has vanished into bureaucracy. For businesses, the GoBusiness portal integrates more than 300 government services. Entrepreneurs log in once, see a customized checklist of licenses and permits, and often receive approvals within 24 hours. By treating digital as the default, Singapore made itself one of the easiest places in the world to live and do business.

New York City — 311 and Open Data
New York has built one of the most comprehensive municipal service systems through its 311 program. Residents can access city services by phone, web, or app, but behind the scenes it all routes through a single integrated platform. This ensures consistency and accountability across dozens of departments. Complementing 311, New York embraced open data: more than 1,500 datasets are published in machine-readable form, from restaurant inspections to street closures. This has enabled hundreds of third-party apps, giving residents new tools without the city paying to build them. The combination of a unified service backbone and an open innovation ecosystem has strengthened both service delivery and civic engagement.

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What Must Be Done

Toronto needs to build digital government into its core operating model. That requires more than new apps or portals—it demands structural change inside City Hall, sustained capital investment, and clear accountability for results. Three reforms are essential: creating a unified service platform for all interactions with the city, redesigning workflows for automation and measurable performance, and opening city systems to outside innovators through secure APIs and open data. Together, these steps would put Toronto in line with global leaders like Estonia and Singapore, while addressing the failures of recent local experiments.

Create a unified digital platform
Right now, every division runs its own systems, forcing residents and businesses to juggle dozens of logins and forms. A unified platform—OneService Toronto—would serve as the single digital front door for all payments, permits, licenses, and service requests. It would give every user one secure login, real-time case tracking, and a consistent design. This requires centralizing responsibility and funding the underlying infrastructure as civic capital, no different than roads or water pipes.

• Establish a Digital Services Office (DSO) under the City Manager with statutory authority through amendments to the City of Toronto Act, 2006 to set design standards, approve or block projects, and enforce data-sharing across divisions.
• Implement single sign-on and federated identity compatible with the forthcoming Ontario Digital ID, giving residents and businesses seamless login across municipal and provincial services.
• Create canonical registers for people, businesses, and properties, governed under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA) to ensure once-only data collection with strict privacy safeguards.
• Consolidate all payments—property taxes, utilities, parking, permits—into a single Payments Hub, authorized under the City of Toronto Act’s financial powers, with options for autopay, digital receipts, and installment plans.
• Finance the build as a multi-year capital program, with explicit targets to capture operational savings from channel shift (digital vs. manual), reduced printing/mailing, and attrition of clerical roles.
  
  

Redesign workflows for automation and accountability
Digital technology will not fix broken processes on its own. Many of Toronto’s services could be delivered in hours if approvals were risk-based and routine cases automated. Service standards are vague, and divisions rarely publish performance data. A serious reform agenda would simplify rules, enforce timelines, and make digital the legal default.

• Pass a Toronto Council by-law under Section 136 of the City of Toronto Act to set binding service standards for turnaround times, with public dashboards showing division-by-division performance.
• Amend relevant municipal codes to make electronic signatures and online submissions presumptively valid, under the Electronic Commerce Act, 2000 (Ontario), ending reliance on paper documents.
• Mandate that high-volume, low-risk transactions—such as permit renewals, parking passes, and routine licenses—use straight-through processing (STP) with automatic approval when requirements are met.
• Integrate inspection workflows with mobile tools, GPS tagging, and digital photo evidence, so inspectors close cases in the field and status updates flow instantly back to residents.
• Reallocate staff from paper-shuffling to frontline support and complex case management, with attrition plans tied to realized efficiency gains.
  
  

Open APIs and expand open data
The city should focus on secure back-end infrastructure and allow private developers, civic tech groups, and startups to create front-end tools residents actually want to use. This requires moving beyond static open data releases to a true government-as-a-platform model. By opening APIs and publishing service metrics in real time, Toronto can spark innovation at no direct cost while maintaining strict governance.

• Develop a secure API Gateway authorized under the City of Toronto Act’s ICT powers, with clear terms of use, developer registration, consent management, and audit trails.
• Require all divisions to expose APIs for core services—payments, service requests, permit status—so third-party tools can plug in.
• Expand the Toronto Open Data Master Plan to cover real-time datasets (e.g., service request volumes, permit approvals, transit disruptions) under a standardized open license.
• Align identity and consent frameworks with the Ontario Digital Service Act, 2019 and MFIPPA, ensuring residents can grant and revoke third-party access transparently.
• Create a procurement pathway for civic tech pilots, using Section 226.9 of the City of Toronto Act to partner with nonprofits and startups outside of full RFP processes.

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Build AI Native Experiences
Artificial intelligence will not replace the need for well-designed applications, but it can transform how residents and staff interact with them. Many of Toronto’s daily frustrations — confusing portals, unclear forms, long routing delays — are exactly the kinds of problems AI can help solve when built on top of a solid platform.

• Deploy a City AI Guide, trained on authoritative open data and municipal bylaws, so residents can ask questions in plain language and receive reliable, official answers.
• Authorize staff to use approved AI tools under clear guidelines, reversing current restrictions that prevent public servants from applying modern technology to routine tasks.
• Integrate AI into navigation of core workflows — e.g., guiding residents step-by-step through a permit application, surfacing missing information before submission, or routing requests to the correct division automatically.
• Work with the open data team to ensure information is structured for AI access through MCP servers, so both city-provided assistants and third-party tools can interact with services securely.
• Establish governance under MFIPPA and the Ontario Digital Service Act to ensure transparency, privacy, and clear accountability for AI use across all divisions.

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Conclusion

Toronto has the opportunity to make its services simple, fast, and reliable by treating digital delivery as essential infrastructure. A unified platform, redesigned workflows, and open APIs would give residents and businesses one secure way to interact with the city, while saving money and improving accountability. With clear governance and measurable targets, Toronto can build a digital system that consistently delivers—modernizing City Hall to match the needs of its people.

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