City hall kiosks provide tangible benefits

As KioskMarketplace says, "Government kiosks can do more than just accept payments — a large number of municipal services, from library book renewal to fishing license sales, make sense as kiosk applications."

They then talk about a program in Denton, TX put in place to handle the extra services they needed to provide as the city expanded: "The Denton program involved two kiosks, the first of which was placed in the police department and collects payments via credit card only. The second, placed in the mall, accepts cash and checks in addition to credit cards, and has generated much more activity. "We will be replacing the police department device with one that accepts cash and check, and we expect our collections from that device to increase correspondingly," [Denton director of technology services Alex] Pettit said.

"Flexibility of payment method is particularly important in a town like Denton, which is home to two universities, Texas Woman’s University and the University of North Texas. "It is not uncommon for two (roommates) to go to the kiosk, one pay half of their (utility) bill with cash and the other write a check for the other half," he said."

The rest of the article is pretty interesting, and shows how a simple application like bill payment services can be provided as a public service via an interactive kiosk.