This episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast features Cate Ryba, director of resident engagement at Tyler Technologies, and Sara Diaz, director of information technology for the City of El Cajon, California. They share how El Cajon is using digital services to make government more intuitive, connected, and trustworthy. The conversation explores how thoughtful design, accessibility, and continuous improvement can strengthen public trust and help residents engage more meaningfully with their community. Tune in to hear how technology and collaboration are shaping a more seamless resident experience.
In this episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast, Cate Ryba, director of resident engagement at Tyler Technologies, and Sara Diaz, director of information technology for the city of El Cajon, California, join the show to discuss how digital services can strengthen community connections and build public trust.
Recorded live at Tyler Connect 2025 in San Antonio, the conversation explores how El Cajon’s My El Cajon app — powered by Tyler’s My Civic platform — is making government more intuitive and responsive. Sara shares how her team designed the app with real residents in mind, incorporating feedback from diverse users to ensure accessibility across ages, languages, and cultures.
Cate highlights how user expectations are evolving and why government technology must deliver the same seamless, reliable experiences that residents enjoy from private-sector apps. Together, they discuss how strong partnerships, data-driven improvements, and thoughtful design can help governments meet residents where they are — online, on their phones, and in their communities.
This episode also spotlights Tyler Connect 2026, where innovation and collaboration take center stage. Taking place April 7–10 at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, Connect brings together public sector professionals from across the country to explore new solutions, share ideas, and strengthen communities. It’s a week dedicated to learning, connection, and imagining what’s possible for the future of government technology. Explore registration details and early bird pricing in the show notes to start planning your Connect 2026 experience.
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Cate Ryba: People just expect to have this seamless, easy, frictionless experience with the technology that their cities, governments, or county governments are offering up to them.
Josh Henderson: From Tyler Technologies, this is the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we explore the trends, technologies, and people shaping the public sector. I’m your host, Josh Henderson. On this episode, I’m joined by Cate Ryba, director of resident engagement at Tyler and Sara Diaz, director of information technology for the city of El Cajon, California. Together, they share how El Cajon is using digital services to make government more accessible, intuitive, and connected, helping residents engage more meaningfully with their community. This conversation was recorded live at Tyler Connect 2025 in San Antonio. Let’s dive in.
Let’s start with this idea of trust.
From your perspectives and experiences, what digital services or initiatives have had the biggest impact on building public trust in your community?
Sara Diaz: What we’re doing through our My El Cajon My Civic app is incorporating follow through with multiple Tyler products, but our citizens have no idea. It’s just, if I’m a citizen and I see a pothole, I go to My El Cajon app. If I want to go check on the status of my permit, I go to My El Cajon app and go into those pages. And so, what we’re doing is also giving them the trust that they can find what they need easily in a citizen designed perspective sort of application. So, we’re trying to hide the secret sauce behind and just give them what they need.
Josh Henderson: That’s great. I mean, to your point, good digital services are intuitive and user-friendly. So, what steps have been taken to make sure your digital offerings are easy to use and meet those residents where they are?
Any specific tools or approaches you found to be helpful?
Sara Diaz: So, from the very moment we stood up our app, our very first beta tester was my mom and her friends.
No offense, but if they could figure it out, and they actually had really good feedback, but I was going to say, you’re going to get that honest feedback.
You get very honest feedback. Yeah, they’re, oh, I’m so proud, but really, it’s like, What’s this wheel thing? How do I do that?
That was really cool, this was not.
Just seeing it, when you’re designing something, you’re thinking about your plan and implementing your plan and seeing it from other people’s perspective changed a few things and made it better, but you have to consider multi-generational, you need to consider cultural aspects, multiple languages. El Cajon, California is a very diverse place and you need to account for all of that as well as are they a citizen? Are they a business? Are they a resident? What are they doing and why in our city?
So, you have to get that input from multiple perspectives.
Cate Ryba: I like to use my 17 year old daughter as a test case too. When we’re thinking about what’s a new feature or is this intuitive?
Because, of course, you know, she’s a native, you know, digital user. Yeah. And so, like, just to your point, Sara, thinking about that 17 year old user versus a 75 year old user and making sure that what you’re designing and what you’re using will make sense for all of them. And, you know, having worked in city government in the past, I know we can kind of to your point, there’s jargon that we use working in city government and, you know, kind of the path through which we can imagine in our head that we would go through to get a permit or to make a payment, but you have to kind of take yourself out of that that understanding and think about if you had act actually, like, no knowledge of that I need to go to public works or that I need to go to, you know, Parks and Rec for these issues. And to your point, just making it like hiding all that secret sauce and just making it super simple.
Sara Diaz: And I think that’s something, as an IT person, sometimes, me and marketing are at odds, right, how they use it is going to be different, and I think that was a really important lesson for me to learn from an IT perspective.
Josh Henderson: And I think you’re all speaking to this idea that technology only works if people use it. Right? So, you’re functioning in that way.
Sara Diaz: The concept of a killer app is real. You know? Otherwise, it’s a toy, and they won’t come back. There has to be a reason for them to come back and something to excite them.
At first, we think, well, yeah, we have a performing arts center. What’s the big thing? But if people are coming to our app to check what acts are coming to our performing arts center, and buying tickets off of it, by the way, okay, we bring them in because now they’re checking how as acts get updated, and they’re coming back. And then, by the way, maybe they’re learning about this or that that they had no idea about government. So, it’s pulling them in based on their interests and something that gets them to come back again and again.
Cate Ryba: And from the Tyler’s perspective, every time they come back, the app needs to work. And that’s a big focus for us and piece of the puzzle because people lose faith in technology really quickly if it’s not something that’s reliable. So, making sure that all the functionality, you know, from our side is meeting their residents’ needs because they’re interacting with, you know, Instagram, they’re making payments through their bank. They are used to that seamless integration and that really frictionless experience that they have with these other apps on their phone. And so, we have to provide that same kind of experience for them with My Civic.
Josh Henderson: Absolutely. What advice would you give for getting buy in from staff and leadership when launching or expanding these types of digital services?
Sara Diaz: I think for us, it was easier for us. We launched in the middle of the pandemic. We had our use case right there. It was laid out right then and there, and then we’ve been tweaking and improving ever since.
But I think one of the important things is spreading the word that those users think about government differently. I had somebody ask, well, why do we need parking permits for RVs on the wheel? Why is that important? And the answer is, because these people need their permit, and they need to be able to park.
Is that the first thing city manager thinks of? No, but it’s a part of the services we provide. And so thinking about, okay, the person that’s coming in and Aunt Judy needs to park her RV on my street for three days, and then there’s the other person who needs a permit, there’s another person who just wants to know what’s going on or is interested in a meeting, or saw a cool reel on Instagram and then is following up. We have to account for all of those, and I think what is in we have to realize that those services are critical to our users even if they’re not ones that we think are the major thing that we’re thinking about as a city.
All of it is important.
Cate Ryba: I hear from other clients as well, kind of making the case to their leadership. Here’s a pain point that our residents have. Here’s a pain point that our staff has with, you know, providing critical services to our residents.
How can we meet that moment with technology? How can we make things more seamless? And how can we really show the value of what we’re providing to our residents from a good government perspective? And My Civic really helps do that and kind of meet the moment for the leadership. And it’s really, you know, trying new things and iterating as well, which El Cajon’s done such a great job of. It’s, you know, kind of constantly making the case that this is really improving the lives of the people in your community, you know, in real-time.
Josh Henderson: Residents continue to expect more and more, it seems, from their government, and I’m curious to know what each of you have learned about resident expectations and how it influences the way you believe services are offered or should be offered.
Sara Diaz: For me personally, when it’s anonymous, people tend to be more critical and complaining.
And the moment it gets personal, they get supportive and so forth. So being able to highlight us as employees, us having the opportunity to be out there. I was at a street festival helping people sign up for the app, and someone came up and told me how wonderful it was, and I’m like, oh, thank you. Yeah, it was really exciting, but then they want to talk more, and then they have other ideas, and it helped us with that personal connection that is really, really important because they’ll show up and they’ll do the work if it’s for a person. If it’s just some monolith that has no face, then people get critical really fast. It’s just human nature and the way social media is going.
Cate Ryba: And I’ll just go back to what I mentioned a few minutes ago. I think people just expect to have this seamless, easy, frictionless experience with the technology that their cities, governments, or county governments are offering up to them, and they want it to work as well as the Bank of America app. They want it to work as well as, like, you know, these multibillion dollar corporations that are, you know, not their city. And I think the great thing about My Civic is it truly provides that that same experience, and that just helps them understand, to Sara’s point, here’s where my tax dollars are going. Here is the power of good government, you know, in my own community.
Sara Diaz: And for a city our size and for an IT organization our size, we couldn’t afford, and we wouldn’t be able to provide if we built it on our own.
We had to partner with somebody that knows what they’re doing. It’s the only way that we could get it done in a way that made sense fiscally and still provided the and met those high expectations.
Josh Henderson: That’s great. I mean, Sara, you mentioned some of the feedback you’ve gotten on the app. I’m sure you’ve gotten some positives, some negatives. It’s it goes both ways. But in what ways would you encourage sort of using data, using feedback, whether it’s resident feedback or usage platforms to make improvements and sort of increase satisfaction?
Sara Diaz: I think you have to be constantly improving, and it’s a fine line. You don’t want to tweak everything so they can’t find everything, but you need to constantly change just to keep it interesting, but also to respond to those concerns. Because even those little changes, and oh, I said this, and now the app’s a little different, builds even more of that trust and keeps them coming back and or telling their friends, which all of those things are what we want to happen. So, you have to keep striving to make it better or find a new way and okay, we’ve done June Bloom.
What’s next? You know, what can we do for fall? Let’s do pumpkins. You know, but to get those different people coming back.
One of the things that I like is the My Civic’s Analytics page offers, it slices and dices what’s going on in the app in many, many different ways, and we celebrate those in council. I think we should also celebrate them a little bit more with our citizens because, again, our average turnaround for our top six types of tickets is less than 48 hours. I mean, it would blow people away. And then you see how many there are, and you’re like, and they’re doing this in under two days?
It’s something that we’re very proud of. Luckily, our council is extremely supportive. They love, what, every about six months or so, we give them stats about what’s going on with the app and things like that. And it’s nice to have that support, and it’s something that we celebrate because it’s all part of the messaging.
Josh Henderson: Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with more of the Tyler Tech Podcast.
Big news. Tyler Connect 2026 is heading to Las Vegas.
Jade Champion: Join us April 7th through April 10th at the Venetian Resort Las Vegas for an unforgettable week of learning, collaboration, and connection.
Josh Henderson: Connect unites public sector professionals to explore new Tyler solutions and to spark ideas that strengthen and empower communities.
Jade Champion: And now’s your chance to save $250 dollars with early bird pricing.
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Jade Champion: Visit tylertech.com/connect to register today or click the link in our show notes.
Josh Henderson: We’ll see you at Tyler Connect 2026 where we empower, collaborate, and imagine what’s possible for the public sector in Vegas.
Jade Champion: Now let’s get back to the Tyler Tech Podcast.
Josh Henderson: And, Cate, I’m sure it’s so nice for you to hear how thoughtfully they’re thinking about analytics…
Cate Ryba: We have other clients who they’ve seen a spike in their downloads and they’re like, well, what are we doing differently? Oh, we had the street festival and there was a QR code and people started downloading the app more, like we should do more of that. So being able to check-in and see, oh, what are the community initiatives that that are really driving engagement is super helpful to, again, like, iterate and do more of that. Or if you’re not getting enough engagement, hey. How do how can we step up our efforts to get people to be in the know and figure out how to use the app or download it?
Josh Henderson: And I think directly related to that, you know, not every resident has the same level of access to digital services. So, what steps would you recommend in taking to make sure digital services are accessible for as many residents as possible regardless of age, language, or access to technology?
Sara Diaz: It’s a multi-pronged approach for us. The app is one way, and what we’re finding is even people that don’t have a computer in their house anymore, they have a phone. So, a lot of ways, it’s moving more towards the phone side versus the computer side. We still offer, you can submit service requests through the computer, and our content on our webpage through a general browser is very similar and, in some ways, the same, just organized differently on the app. So, we have that but what we’re finding now is the big push is now that we know that most generations and most demographics have a phone, the next step is language and being able to provide that information in the language that they’re most comfortable in.
Cate Ryba: Another piece of the puzzle is ADA accessibility, and that’s something that we’ve been working on a lot over the past year, year and a half. So, making sure that as the app can change to adapt to text sizes or for voice to text and things like that, that it’s really easy for those users. And then one other piece of the puzzle too is making sure that, you know, you can still walk into city hall.
And so, there’s the technology piece that then there’s also an opportunity at that point to teach whoever is coming in for a certain service to, hey, the next time you want to do this, here’s how you can use it.
Sara Diaz: And we do that a lot. We have online permit payments, and if you apply for a permit in the city of El Cajon, you must use the online app services because that’s how your bills are going to be distributed. That’s how you’re going to find out you have the permit.
And so, we, literally part of the process, if someone comes in and they’re welcome to come in, but they leave with the app on their phone, and it is working so that they can find the information they need. So that education is really important.
It was also a backer on our permit for a while, all the steps on how to get set up. So just any chance we can to help them, because what we find is, is they didn’t know it existed. Once they know it existed, it’s like, Oh, that’s awesome. And then all of a sudden, they’re hooked.
And especially the people that come to counsel that are frustrated, a lot of times what we find is they’re frustrated because maybe we didn’t meet them where they were at in a communication channel, and they were trying to go one way that wasn’t set up right. And so, we can fix that, but we can also push them into the ways that are going to get them the most effective. It’s easiest for them, easiest for us, and you get feedback. If you call in, you may not get a phone call back that it’s closed, but if you open the ticket in the app, you know right then and there that something’s been done on your issue. And if you have concerns on how it’s done, there’s a two way communication. You can add more comments in.
Josh Henderson: So, for public sector leaders who maybe want to improve resident satisfaction but may not know where to start, what’s your advice to them, and what should they keep in mind as they consider expanding and modernizing their digital services?
Cate Ryba: I, in a previous life, worked in local government. I was also on a city council. I know what it’s like to be afraid to fail. Right? Because you don’t want to fail your residents. But one of, you know, one of the great things I think from a leadership perspective that you can provide to your staff, if you’re a department director, is let them iterate, let them try something. You might fail, but if you’re transparent with your residents about it and say, we’re going to do better, I mean, builds authenticity that you’re really trying.
So, I think starting small, picking one thing where you can follow through, and then just building on it.
Josh Henderson: I think that’s great advice and a great way to wrap things up. Thank you all so much for sharing your perspectives and your insights. This has been great.
As we heard today, digital services are about much more than convenience. They’re about building trust, improving access, and creating stronger connections between residents and their local governments. Cate and Sara shared how the city of El Cajon is using technology to deliver intuitive, reliable digital experiences that meet residents where they are and how those efforts are helping strengthen engagement and confidence across the community. If you’d like to learn more about resident engagement and other topics discussed during this episode, check out the show notes for additional resources.
And we’d love to hear your feedback. Fill out the listener survey linked in the notes or reach out anytime at podcast at Tyler Tech dot com. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the show so you never miss an episode. For Tyler Technologies, I’m Josh Henderson.
Thanks for listening to the Tyler Tech Podcast.