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Dunedin
Dunedin City Council has embraced the vision of e-government and has implemented it locally to meet changing customer needs. It is now at the leading edge in customer-driven electronic service delivery.
One call does it all
Dunedin City’s multi-service Customer Service Agency (CSA) is at the front end of the local e-govt service. It is the council’s first point of contact with citizens, handles customer requests for information and service, and receives and processes payments. Citizens e-mail, phone, visit, write or send a Fix-o-gram to the Agency, spelling out their question, and the Agency staff take responsibility for getting an answer. Callers are given a complaint referral number to help in tracking.
The CSA provides service over a wide range of topics – libraries, Visitors Centre, swimming pools, recycling and waste, animal control, rates, parking, building inspectors, museums and art galleries. It deals with 80 percent of enquiries at the first point of contact. If CSA staff cannot respond, they will pass the question to the relevant technical expert, says Brendan Shea, team leader, Dunedin City Customer Service Agency. Dunedin’s CSA, website and other Citizens’ Direct services help 4,000 callers per day, seven days a week.
Benefits of this one-stop-shop for consumers include making it easier for them, consistent procedures and extended coverage. Technical and field staff are not tied to telephones, and don’t return to their desks to find copious messages.
Brendan Shea says CSA organises its information on the intranet under
topic, not department – another example of the customer-driven focus. Dunedin
has also found that requests for better accessibility from people with disabilities
are easier to meet, thanks to e-government.
Organisation of content around user needs – rather than the organisation’s
needs – was highlighted as a Dunedin strength by An evaluation of local
government websites in New Zealand, a Victoria University study.
Dunedin City rates the effectiveness of its CSA on answer time, greeting, warmth of welcome, quality of listening, control of call, product knowledge, sales awareness, conclusion to call, operator overall attitude, staff efficiency and anticipation of future needs.
Lessons
E-government provides benefits at the governance as well as the management level. Councillors, instead of being targeted by citizens to solve the local pot-hole problem, can focus on policy choice and other governance concerns. Councillors who still need to deal with the pot-hole type of complaint can use their access to the KnowledgeBase intranet to help the enquiring citizen.
Citizens and councillors can also improve their communication online – which means more than giving public access to council agendas and minutes. Citizens can email councillors with general ideas – as if they were on a soapbox – or make comment on particular issues up for consultation.
It’s another way in which council can monitor the pulse of the people, says Rodney Bryant, the council’s communications coordinator.
Four building blocks
The Dunedin experience indicates there are four important building blocks that must be in place for successful local e-government:
- a public website for customers to access information they want, when they want
- an intranet that drives the work of the organisation
- a document management system that brings together all records relating to an entity such as property
- a geographic information service (GIS) that presents land and property information visually.
The success of e-government depends on an organisation’s willingness to make themselves more accessible, says Rodney Bryant. “Buy- in is necessary.” Councils also need to:
- have the right mindset for change
- desire to meet customer needs
- change before change is imposed
- have integrated inter-disciplinary project teams
- involve all staff and engage citizens in the process
- recognise and use knowledge as a core asset for government
- simplify and reduce the number of processes in the operation
- demonstate advantages to all parties.
www.CityofDunedin.com
Dunedin City welcomes enquiries from other cities interested in applying The
KnowledgeBase intranet and identifying strategic options in local application
of e-government.
Email Information Systems Manager: mike.harte@dcc.govt.nz
bshea@dcc.govt.nz
mbrnton@dcc.govt.nz
rgarrett@dcc.govt.nz
rbryant@dcc.govt.nz
See also www.insight@socitm.gov.uk for the 2002 British Socitm Insight publication, Local e-government: learning from the best in New Zealand.
