Electronic Government and improving customer service in the council
What is e-Government?
The Government set a target date of 2005 for all Councils to electronically enable 100% of service transactions that can be. This meant offering more of our services via the web, over the telephone, through mobile working and more face to face opportunities.
Each year our progress towards this date was monitored by returning the Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) Statement to Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. These statements set out targets and objectives for the Council to meet to make our services more accessible to customers.
The Government’s initiative has now ended and, by the end of March 2006, HDC had successfully e-enabled 95.85% of our services.
Improving our services
The council chose to use the opportunity to begin to transform the way we offer and deliver our services to customers. We have recognised that customer expectations have changed, you now can pay your bills, shop for food and many other things 24 hours a day and we want you to be able to access your Council services like this. We have put together a programme of work entitled “Customer First”.
What have we done so far?
The council has already implemented:
- A Call Centre with extended opening hours
Our Call Centre offers mediated access to a wide variety of council services and information. We are seeking to build on what we have implemented so far and further increase the services that are offered via the call centre
We regularly seek feedback from customers who use the call centre on their experiences. We are pleased to note that customers have welcomed the introduction of the call centre
- A transactional website
We are continually seeking to improve the website by increasing the information that can be obtained from the web
The website is available 24 hours per day which means that you can access this information when it is convenient to you
Our web pages now contain links to other public service providers so you can use our web as a gateway to most public services
We have also the opportunity to make some service requests on line. For instance – you can request a new wheeled bin or report a missed refuse collection on the web via a short form
We have also made style improvements on our websites and have improved accessibility
Improving our internal processes
- In October 2006, the council won a national award for outstanding service delivery using the Local Land and Property Gazetteer. The Local Land and Property Gazetteer is a central database that provides the details of all land and property within the district. By linking the gazetteer across departments the council reduces duplication and inefficiency by creating property addresses only once but that can be maintained and used many times, resulting in the delivery of better services
What are we doing next?
- Developing a Customer Service Centre
- Making further improvements to our website
- Developing on-line payments
- Improving the refuse collections calendar
- Making improvements to back office systems to support electronic and mobile working
For more information please see the links on the right to our IEG statements or contact a member of the Customer First team on 01480 388388.