Disaster Recovery from ICMA International: In the course of conducting after-action reports following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) noticed a common theme: unprecedented numbers of spontaneous volunteers, most of whom were not affiliated with an established volunteer agency, streamed into
Category: Sector TopicsNews and views about general Public Sector topics
So what’s your story?
As we highlighted in a previous post, the value delivered by public services is often opaque. As result, a rationale or ‘story’ needs to exist to justify the provision of funding for the public service provider. Every now and again, this rationale is put in the spotlight and re-examined by actors and events outside the control of the public service provider. For example, when a high-profile
How much is that…
...doggy in the window (Woof! Woof!) The one with the waggley tail (you'll be humming that for the remainder of the day now, won't you). Our focus in this post, though, is not on cuddly canines, rather it's on the value of public services. Unlike private service whose value is often determined by whether they are profitable or not (in other words, do they generate more revenue than it costs to
Can you afford not to?
From Niyi Ogunbiyi, (Director, Change Enablers Ltd) In our previous post, we made the case that public service providers needed to do more than simply measure customer satisfaction metrics. In order to understand why customers are satisfied or otherwise, it is necessary to understand the end-to-end service delivery lifecycle and to that end we introduced the “Service Excellence Capability
Beyond Customer Service Performance Measurement…
In our last post we shared some performance measurement thoughts by Cory Fleming 311/CRM Program Director, ICMA, on local government customer services. A number of suggestions were proffered - Organizational Knowledge Tests, "Secret Shopper” Evaluations, Customer Service Innovations and Citizen Satisfaction Surveys. These suggestions are a good start, and credit must be given to public service
Customer Service Performance Measures for Sustainable Communities
From ICMA Center For Sustainable Communities (Cory Fleming 311/CRM Program Director, ICMA) This past Wednesday (November 20), I led an online discussion on “Building Customer Service into Local Government.” One participant came up with a great but challenging question – what performance measures do you use to evaluate customer service? I suggested customer surveys and comments cards, but I
PSR Sponsors NAGW 2013 National Conference
PSR is proud to be sponsoring the National Association of Government Web Professionals (NAGW) 2013 National Conference. Please visit our booth to get acquainted. We have lots to show you. Governments at all levels are fighting back in response to funding cuts and caps, by delivering Services more effectively, while engendering new levels of Citizen Engagement. See how you can take the
Wasting away….
As our name suggest, facilitating quality service delivery is what we are about. To that end, we will be writing a series of blog posts on how to develop and maintain excellence in public service delivery. The first post in this series will address the issue of reducing (elimination is the ultimate goal but we’ll start with reduction) waste in service delivery. Waste reduction has taken on
Guelph’s Open Government Initiative…Financial Reality Check
Open Government strikes again! The City of Guelph in the Province of Ontario, Canada, is the latest in a steady series of Local Governments announcing a dedicated initiative to seek closer connections to the Public by being more transparent, interactive and focused on better Customer Service. However, not every Local or Regional Government Organization has a spare $100K "strategic reserve" for
Floods, Tornadoes, Wild Fires, Droughts, Disasters
Are disasters on the increase? Yes, we've been seeing all kinds of disasters in apparently increasing frequency, unfortunately. As a result people are taking a more proactive approach to surviving and recovering from these catastrophic events. What can we do in the aftermath of disasters? People and Businesses can take free advantage of our online Service Request system. Take your
Geocode to TreeOcode Niagara – Mobile technology winner
Introducing treeOcode Niagara I'm communicating on behalf of the Geospatial Niagara Group to introduce treeOcode Niagara. We're organizing a "crowd-sourcing" program to build an inventory of all the trees across the Niagara Region, with a strong emphasis on sustainability. The project is named “TreeOcode-Niagara”. We are using smartphone-based technology to capture essential tree attributes
Sacramento, Calif.’s 311 App Helps Create Well-Managed City
We thought you might appreciate this piece from Sacramento. It's both a cautionary tale, and one of positive eventual outcomes. Cautionary, because the City started out by installing a 311 system without considering how to handle the calls efficiently once they arrived, thus causing a negative backlash from drowned Public expectations. Positive, in that by offering an App (at $100K
