Putting the citizen at the heart of local government

“We chose CGI for its excellent track record in innovative working with government agencies in North America, where it has successfully pioneered its single-window government approach. Having adopted this approach in Suffolk, we are now able to put the priorities of our citizens first and organize the way we deliver council services to meet their needs.”

Bryony Rudkin, Leader of Suffolk County Council

Faced with the daunting task of offering an e enabled 'joined up' service to citizens by 2005, Suffolk County and Mid Suffolk District Councils embraced an ambitious programme to re-engineer their organizations and transform the way they deliver services to the citizens of Suffolk.

Suffolk County Council is a progressive and dynamic organization, committed to working closely with similar organizations in order to improve the quality of life for its citizens. Mid Suffolk District Council is also focused on achieving best value for citizens, and offering the best possible services to meet the varied needs of the community.

The Challenge
Both County and District Councils were looking to improve public access to council services for individuals and businesses – making them quicker, easier and more convenient to access.

“It is important that we win the confidence of the public we serve.” says Andrew Good, Chief Executive, Mid Suffolk District Council. “One of the ways to achieve this is to tailor services to the needs of citizens. Not everyone is able to access local government services between the hours of nine and five. For people who are day carers or on work shifts this is often extremely inflexible. We are, therefore, committed to making public access much easier.”

Government services have historically centered on working practices, rather than customers' needs. To this end, depending on the type of enquiry, members of the public were frequently passed between several departments or from one council to the next. Added to this, a proliferation of red tape made it difficult for local council staff to work effectively and efficiently, wasting both time and money.

A customer-focused, easily accessible and high quality service was therefore Suffolk's number-one objective. In order to achieve this, Suffolk County Council and Mid Suffolk District Council determined they needed to adopt a 'one-stop-shop' approach, joining up county and district services and enabling citizens to access council services across multiple channels; on the Internet, by telephone or over the counter. This would also ensure that both Suffolk County Council and Mid Suffolk District Council achieved the UK central government's aim for all services to be e-enabled by 2005.

The Solution
To realize this vision, Suffolk County and Mid Suffolk District Councils signed a ten-year joint venture agreement with British Telecommunications (BT), who selected CGI as its transformation partner. Not only well known for its key strengths in government transformation and change management, CGI was selected for its pioneering single-window government approach. The Councils were particularly impressed with CGI's track record for innovative working with government, highlighted by its work with Service New Brunswick in Canada.

An ambitious private-public partnership was therefore set up to transform not only the way services were delivered, but also how they were perceived by the public. In the private sector, customers would not expect to be restricted to a nine to five day or be unable to use the Web to communicate, yet for local councils this has been the norm. Key to changing attitudes to service delivery was the management of the cultural shift for staff that they were now delivering a customer-centric service.

The joint venture company, 'Customer Service Direct' (CSD), is unique in the UK for embracing two levels of local government to provide truly 'customer-centric', cross service delivery of its products and services.

CSD encompasses ICT, HR, Finance and Public Access services, with CGI taking responsibility for heading the Public Access Programme and overseeing the cultural transformation across the other work streams.

The Strategy
To achieve a single point of access to government services across multiple channels, the project team implemented a standardized IT infrastructure, with integration points into the back office providing a common, controlled, point of access. CGI implemented their electronic service delivery platform allowing citizens to communicate via the Web, by phone or face-to-face, using the same service delivery platform across channels to ensure consistency of service.

The first major milestone was achieved with the opening of the Stowmarket customer service centre in Mid Suffolk. This comprises a 6-station area for face-to-face contact on the ground floor and a 30-seat call centre above for telephone and Internet enquiries.

“If customers want to access services, local governments must make it easy for them to do so,” comments Andrew Good, CEO, Mid Suffolk District Council. “Suffolk has organized access so that its citizens can contact us at a time and in a way that suits them. We can no longer restrict citizens to standard office hours.”

Drawing on its government transformation experience in North America, CGI's Single Window consultancy and training practice is playing an integral part in promoting the cultural change required within the Suffolk councils. It was vital that this cultural transformation – which puts the customer at the centre of the councils' business processes – be effectively communicated, to ensure that all staff embraced the new working practices supported by the 'one-stop-shop' technology.

CGI's Managing Director for CGI in Northern Europe said: “There are a huge number of issues being dealt with by CSD including culture, training, leadership and heightened communication to name just a few. At the centre of all these issues is a 'customer-centric' approach – people serving people. Single window government must work for the customer if it's going to be effective.”

The Technology

• Database: MS SQL server
• Operating system: MS Wintel platform
• Languages: gBIZ™ (CGI proprietary tool set), SQL, HTML, XML

The Results
Through the new Customer Service Direct centre, Suffolk County Council and Mid Suffolk District Council have achieved a one-stop-shop for all council services, ensuring the public can access any service they require through a single point of contact. For example, a citizen wishing to make a complaint about a litter problem may previously have been re-routed through several local authorities in the quest to identify whether the responsibility was a council, borough or district matter. The new system ensures any complaint – no matter whose area of responsibility – can be dealt with immediately, at the first point of contact. In addition, during the same call the citizen could then make an enquiry regarding payment of council tax, for example, which would be dealt with by the same call centre operative. It is this kind of transformation that is leading to significant changes in customer satisfaction levels.

Around 100 people visit the centre each day for help, advice and information about a wide range of services: from making payments, or reporting problems to obtaining information about everything from refuse collection to transport. The specially trained staff also handle around 300 calls each day. Bryony Rudkin, Leader of Suffolk County Council, said: “I am really pleased to see the start of what will be a much more responsive way of doing business with people.”

With all services realigned to meet citizens' needs and expectations, Suffolk's citizens are reaping significant benefits including better services, speed and efficiency. Suffolk County Council and Mid Suffolk District Council expect to see customer satisfaction levels rise substantially this year. This projection is supported by the experience at New Brunswick, where CGI helped to almost double satisfaction levels from 54% to 92%.

It is not only the public in Suffolk who are and will continue to benefit from the single-window approach, but local businesses, council workers and the councils themselves. CGI's single-window approach is much more efficient, allowing savings to be reinvested in order to deliver even richer services. Routine activities, such as paying council tax, can now be carried out online, freeing up local council staff's time and allowing them to concentrate on resolving the more pressing issues troubling Suffolk's citizens and businesses. This, in turn, will increase council workers' job satisfaction, as insufficient tools and technology will no longer prohibit them from doing their jobs to their best ability.

Cultural transformation played a winning role in supporting the new technology processes. Managing director for Northern Europe comments: “Vital to the project's success was the ability to transform the working culture at Suffolk and train staff to adapt to these changes. This work will ensure the sustainability of single window government success.” Sustainability has been further enhanced through an aggressive transition program aimed at ensuring that the skills brought to the table by CGI remain with CSD and through it to the councils involved in the partnership.

Attitudes to service delivery have changed dramatically and the opening of the Stowmarket centre provided staff with a huge morale boost. At the end of the first day after opening the centre, staff were keen to volunteer to work on the following Saturday because they had enjoyed it so much!

“When I visited the Bureau I was extremely impressed with the enthusiasm and efficiency of the staff and their ability to serve the public quickly and seamlessly,” said Sara Michell, Deputy Leader at Mid Suffolk District Council. “One customer that day had four separate queries dealt with while her children were kept happy with the toys provided.”

The UK Audit commission encourages Councils to work together so that the public receives services more easily. In its latest report, which gave Suffolk a rating of 'excellent', the Auditor commented: “I am particularly pleased to see that Suffolk County Council and Mid Suffolk District Council have linked up to provide a new Customer Service Direct access point in Stowmarket. This one-stop-shop for both district and county council services is good news for people in Mid Suffolk, and possibly beyond, if other districts join in.”

During 2005 Suffolk aims to roll out two more access centers; bring other councils on board; work further on the integration of systems and introduce self-service Web applications for citizens. Ultimately, Suffolk aims to have 80% of customer enquiries dealt with at the first point of contact. Over the next ten years, CGI will work with Suffolk County Council and Mid Suffolk District to create an environment that truly puts the Suffolk citizen at the heart of local government.