Case Study: How NolaStat can improve citizen satisfaction with City Hall
Last week’s customer satisfaction task force hearing offered some excellent boilerplate complaints about how New Orleans City Hall functions, and provided some examples that merit examination as case studies for how problems could be fixed within a NolaStat framework.
Problem: People need a response from city workers right away. They can’t wait until tomorrow for an answer.
“Get rid of the answer machines!” Steve Donahue said, echoing the sentiments of many who attended the late afternoon forum at Langston Hughes Charter School in Gentilly.
Donahue, who does rebuilding work, said that when he tries to reach a city agency by phone, he’s usually looking for permitting information immediately.
“I need to talk to City Hall today,” he said. “If I need to talk to them tomorrow, I’d call them tomorrow.”
NolaStat Solution: Implement a transparent performance management process
A key NolaStat recommendation is for the next mayor to implement a performance management strategy that identifies all city agencies that are responsible for handling some aspect of high priority citizen concerns, that benchmarks performance indicators for those city agencies, and that defines achievable outcomes to improve customer satisfaction.
In this instance, the speaker is a builder who is probably expressing frustration with the time it takes to acquire building permits, a process that has to traffic applications through a number of city departments. Additionally, the speaker clearly expressed frustration with the time it takes to get a response by phone.
To solve this problem within a performance management context, two key performance indicators could be tracked and published for the public to review. One would be the aggregate time it takes to process building permits from the time the applications are submitted, to the time they are returned to the applicant, with detailed indicators for how long the permit is handled by each department so that bottlenecks can be identified.
Another key performance indicator would be how long it takes for people to speak to a person in City Hall who can help them, and whether the callers are satisfied with the outcome of the call.
By focusing on the efficiency and quality of service, other complaints about poor service, city workers with attitude, and frustration with bureaucratic processes, will be set aside.
Cooperation between agencies, risk-taking, and learning that achieves desired performance, should be recognized and rewarded. NolaStat seeks to replace patronage politics — based upon the exchange of favors — and process politics — in which government workers view success in terms of adherence to official protocols — with performance-based politics — in which government agencies define success in terms of outcomes the public cares about.
Read more about the NolaStat reform recommendations in the NolaStat brochure, and follow daily activity leading up to Mitch Landrieu’s inauguration as Mayor of New Orleans on Facebook and Twitter.
