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ITEM EX13
EXECUTIVE
– 20 APRIL 2004
PUBLIC ACCESSIBILITY
OF COUNCIL SERVICES AND STAFF
Report by
Director for Resources
Introduction
- On 13 January
2004 the Council adopted the following motion by Councillor Andrew Brown:
"This
Council agrees that to work effectively with the public and with other
bodies, internal structures and nomenclature need to be configured in
a way that makes sense to users of our services. To this end, the Council
requests the Executive to work with the Customer Services Manager to
identify what can be done to make the Council’s services and staff more
easily accessible for members of the public and other bodies and to
report back by September 2004."
- This report places
the Council’s request in the context of the Customer Services Strategy
which is currently in preparation, with particular reference to possible
improvements to the County Council telephone directory (eg by listing
contacts by the area with which they can help, rather than by job title)
which is understood to be Cllr Brown’s principal concern. The Strategy
is due for presentation to the Executive for approval in October 2004.
Customer
Services Strategy
- The Customer Service
‘Launch Week’, held in November 2003, gave members and staff an opportunity
to make suggestions for improving internal and external customer service
within the Council. The overwhelming feedback was that improving the
functionality of the internal telephone directory and staff database
would provide significant improvements to current working practices.
- The issues that
arose included the following:
- Because of high
staff turnover the information in the directory is often out of date.
- The paper version
can only be updated periodically (currently, every two years).
- It relies on
individuals to ensure that updates are passed to the appropriate person
who makes the updates (often as an added duty and not part of their
job description).
- Accuracy cannot
be guaranteed because there is not a designated officer responsible
for routinely checking entries.
- An individual
must know the person’s name to make a direct search for their number
– often this isn’t known.
- Not all members
of staff are listed.
- It can be difficult
to deal with telephone queries from the public because there is no
easy way, such as a searchable database of staff, to find out who
the relevant person would be.
- As to the public
interface, staff operating the central switchboard provide an excellent
front line service for incoming enquiries, in terms of contacts not
only across the County Council but often in other organisations. In
addition, reception staff in the Directorates provide an excellent call
fielding service, and have substantial knowledge within their own buildings
and often the authority as a whole. However, these services depend largely
on acquired knowledge to supplement the basic directory information
that is currently available. This has obvious implications where staff
leave or are absent from work.
- The most comprehensive
solution would be to develop a self-service database linked to the MIS
system and accessed via the intranet (and potentially via the public
web-site) which:
- would list staff
by name, job title, principal responsibilities and possibly other
aspects such as special skills and photographs;
- would be fully
searchable by reference to any of those attributes;
- would include
similar details for councillors;
- could be updateable
locally (possibly to the extent of individual staff revising some
or all of their personal details);
- should accordingly
be accurate and up to date at all times;
- could be utilised
by staff and members in day to day working;
- would provide
central switchboard and other reception staff with a more reliable
and complete reference point when dealing with approaches by members
of the public;
- could be developed
to provide a direct enquiry facility for the public.
- More development
work needs to be carried out on the viability of this proposal but in
principle it is achievable. It would also meet the Council’s Raising
our Performance Strategic Objective and Teamwork and Co-operation
Core Value. It is suggested that a report back on this development
work should be made in the context of the Customer Services Strategy
in October 2004, rather than separately in September (as mentioned in
the motion by Councillor Brown). The report will need to indicate the
level of resources that would be required to implement the proposal.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- The Executive
is RECOMMENDED to:
- note the
potential of the approach set out in the report for meeting the requirements
identified by the Council and in the feedback from the Customer Service
‘Launch Week’;
- authorise
development work on this approach for further report in the context
of the Customer Services Strategy.
JOHN
JACKSON
Director for
Resources
Background
Papers: Nil
Contact
Officer: Debbie Dent, Customer Service Manager, Tel (01865) 810127
April
2004
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