Local governments are confronted with a deep and persistent recession, making for a difficult readjustment, including a wholesale change in how government does business. Fiscal shortfalls have caused a cascading effect by freezing access to capital, delaying expenditure, cutting services, and causing reductions in personnel. However, from out of all the doom and gloom some government agencies are finding ways to optimize government operations, deliver services more efficiently, engage citizens and ultimately do so with a focus on fiduciary responsibility. The 800 pound gorilla (recession) in the room will not go anywhere for some time, but it is up to government leadership to face the problem head on with innovative solutions that meet the challenge.
Governments challenging the recession are leveraging technology to automate operations, improve service delivery and citizen convenience, and uncover some level of quantifiable return-on-investment (ROI) – all while reducing the costs typically associated with technology deployment. To enhance business and improve public service delivery, technology must not only do the job it has been tasked, but also assist in the measurement and evaluation of organizational performance against established goals. This begs the question: how can a technology purchase actually improve performance, value and accountability? To answer this question, let us consider two key types of enterprise government solutions that are currently delivering significant improvements in business function and customer service, as well as in-depth performance measurement and reporting capabilities: Citizen Request Management/311, and Integrated Cashiering/Payment Management.
Citizen Request Management/311 (CRM) software empowers governments to improve service levels and responsiveness with a centralized system to track, route and manage all citizen inquiries and requests, from pothole repairs to graffiti removal. CRM eliminates redundancies across departments, holding governments accountable for resolving issues according to defined business goals. Performance reporting in a CRM system allows multiple views to organizational performance (e.g. issue type, department, geography, etc.) which are used as inputs as part of a performance management program.
Home to more than 1.5 million people, Hillsborough County, FL delivers services to three cities and a large unincorporated region where it serves as municipal service provider. The county grew too quickly to keep up with the technology required to service such growth. The county was faced with trying to resolve citizen requests coming in from several different departments, all with disparate systems. Not only did this create inefficient communication between departments, this also created duplicate data entries and inefficiencies in resolving requests for citizens.
The county turned to a CRM solution to achieve goals such as centralizing calls and enhancing customer service at their Citizen Action Center; improving communication, performance and accountability; tracking performance on issue resolution for continued service improvement; and better resource management.
Edith Stewart, Public Affairs Administrator at Hillsborough County, notes, "Given that we’re under extreme budget restraints, we know that our organization will continue to shrink, despite the increased demand for services. We see our CRM solution as a tool that will help us manage the organizational changes and prioritize tasks to continue to meet citizen needs and expectations."
An integrated cashiering/payment management solution provides a good case study in delivering performance, value and accountability. By employing an enterprise-wide centralized cashiering system, governments stand to glean such benefits as standardized cash handling practices, enterprise-wide reporting, a robust audit trail for all transactions, and ultimately better financial control and oversight. For citizens, the convenience is the most apparent benefit, as a payment management system enables easy access and ‘one stop shopping’ to pay multiple fees/bills/receivables in a single transaction, over any payment channel, such as telephone or Web.
The city of San Clemente, CA relied on multiple best-of-breed systems across its City Hall, Community Center and Community Development departments. The city needed a cashiering solution that could merge their existing software systems seamlessly, and process funds in real-time from any location as a convenience for citizens.
San Clemente employed a cashiering system that not only achieved its original goals, but also eliminated five hours per week in cashiering activities, created a visible change in traffic on "shut off" days, converted 25% of all payments to online transactions, and is now accepting payments at departments city-wide. The city’s use of technology is a striking example of performance, value and accountability improvement at its best. Citizens benefit from the new, time-saving services, and through a vast suite of reporting capabilities, the city is assessing service performance across multiple service channels, speeding the revenue collection process, eliminating redundancies and establishing benchmarks for future performance.
When it’s your turn as a government to step up your operations and do more with less, will you be prepared to demonstrate your performance, value and accountability? Will you have reports to show your supervisors continuous improvements in efficiencies and service delivery? Can you be the one to thrive in economic hardship by thinking creatively about the exit strategy?
The easiest way to manage through a crisis of this magnitude is to view the problem from new and unique angles, and to start thinking about initiatives that deliver the ROI that satisfies the business, while also encouraging citizen participation.