Public sector software specialist Civica partnered with the City of Whittlesea at the recent Intelligent Cities Conference. Civica supply web enabled, enterprise software to Local Government, libraries and the health insurance industry and estimate that more than eight million people within Australian communities are served by Civica software.
“If we add all the customers of our councils using Authority, plus all the customers that use our Spydus library software, plus the customers of our Health Insurance Funds, then we are looking at around eight million Australians served by Civica software,” said Terry Pascoe, Civica’s National Sales and Marketing Manager.
Councils throughout Australia have been using Civica’s Authority e-Services solution to deliver a range of online services to their communities for around three years.
In his presentation to delegates at the Intelligent Cities Conference, Terry Pascoe used examples from the City of Whittlesea, City of South Perth and Lane Cove Council to demonstrate that councils are achieving significant results from their online applications.
“Our councils have had e-Services in place for several years so they can now measure average transaction costs and analyse changes in processing methods, looking at full year comparisons,” Terry Pascoe said. “For example, City Of Whittlesea’s Business Process Mapping and Review (BPMR) team map the existing process and measure the average transaction cost to provide a starting point. When the new electronic end to end transaction process is mapped and measured, the BPMR team subtract the cost of one from the other to determine the savings per transaction.”
City of Whittlesea has completed cost/benefit analysis of a number of its External Service Delivery processes, including Land Information Certificates, Purchasing and Notice of Disposal/Acquisition, and the savings per transaction have been significant at 79 per cent, 76 per cent and 43 per cent respectively. Online Development Application (DA) tracking is another area of great importance to the City of Whittlesea with their high development and growth rate.
“Whittlesea has had this in operation for just over ten months and therefore results have not yet been published, however, initial figures suggest that the community strongly support this initiative,” Terry Pascoe said. “More than 1,600 web enquiries have been completed in the ten month period. That may translate to 160 phone calls per month that do not have to be answered. This is a significant saving in its own right, without considering the impact of disruptions to professional officers.”
The other aspect of e-Services that Councils are now able to measure is the impact upon customer’s choice of payment method.
The City of South Perth, a busy, inner city metropolitan council with a higher than average Internet access rate, has now measured payment methods for the 2001/2002 and 2002/2003 financial years. South Perth has seen an increase in revenues collected via Authority e-Services of 86 per cent over the past 12 months.
“Bill Pay has been in use at South Perth for many years and, while it also increased by 17 per cent, it is Internet payments that have really jumped,” Terry Pascoe said.
Council believes the reason for this is customers’ confidence in real time transactions where they can actually see the details of their transaction online. With Authority, customers can see their relationships with council and have a great deal of confidence in the interaction. A major improvement on the old ‘key in the account number, now enter the amount’ without any visual verification.
Lunchtime queues at South Perth Council have reduced dramatically with a 30 per cent decrease in over the counter payments, which means happier, less stressed staff and customers. The mail bag is also lighter, with payments by mail decreasing by 15 per cent, and effectively reducing the time staff spend opening and processing mail.
Lane Cove Council in NSW implemented online customer requests in June 2002, allowing customers to make requests or lodge complaints via Council’s web site. In the first six months, Council found 12 per cent of all requests were lodged via the Internet and in the 12 months to December 2003 that figure had jumped to 28 per cent of all requests lodged.
“There was some initial concern that the ability to lodge requests via the web site may have led to an overall increase in the number of requests lodged and therefore an increase in overall workload,” Terry Pascoe said. “In fact, there has been no significant change.”
According to Terry, online requests are an excellent example of creating an e-Path where double handling of information is eliminated, and the actioning officer has uninterrupted access to all relevant data, including any photos or messages, directly from the customer.
“This delivers a better customer service outcome and has the capacity to reduce Council’s operational costs,” he said.
For further information please visit www.civica.com.au
* Copy supplied by Civica
