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I Endorse This Reform!

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20
Total number of separate "Call Centers" staffed and financed in the General Fund alone-each with separate phone number and customer support system

186
Total number of Public Affairs and Community Outreach positions in General Fund budgets outside of Office of Public Affairs and Citizen Assistance budgets

33 Percent
Average increase in customer satisfaction as measured by Siebel Systems in "311" Service Center Operations

26 Percent
Average increase in City employee productivity measured by Siebel Systems in "311" Service Center Operations

$0
Amount of money required be spent by the City of San Diego in a "Share-in-Savings" contract approach to funding and implementing a "311" Service Center

NOTE ON FOOTNOTES:
The San Diego Citizens' Budget Project is committed to presenting accurate, methodical research. The Citizens' Budget Plan contains more than 100 footnotes, all of which can be found in the print and full PDF versions.

Create a "311" Citizen Service Center
 Provide Citizens a One-Stop Center to Request City Services and Track the Progress of their Requests

The City should place citizen service at its highest priority. Unfortunately, San Diego City government is not designed from a “citizen-centered” perspective. Based on a review of General Fund agencies, the project identified more than 20 City “call centers”—formal citizen support centers complete with customer support systems. This figure does not count general receptionist lines in virtually every City office. The result is a confusing system that it not citizen-friendly—and is inefficient. Fortunately, other local governments (notably Indianapolis, New York City, and Chicago) offer San Diego an alternative model called a “311 Service Center.”

In addition, the City spends millions each year on a variety of public awareness campaigns—sometimes with duplicative and overlapping mailings to City residents. Improved coordination of outreach activities would improve the effectiveness of these awareness and information campaigns, as well as save City resources.


The following initiatives would improve citizen services.

• Create a “311” Service Center
San Diego’s 311 Center would provide one single phone number for non-emergency service requests for San Diegans. The center would consolidate all City service request functions into one centralized service center—using a consolidated “case management” system to create, track and refer all service requests made by citizens for resolution by the appropriate City departments.

The City Council should instruct the manager to solicit bids using a “Share-in-Savings” contract model for the creation of the “311” center. Under share-in-savings, the vendor would pay all up-front costs and then receive a portion of the savings resulting from consolidating all the City’s call centers. One vendor—Siebel Systems—has already expressed interest in this approach for San Diego.

• Integrate Public Affairs Outreach and Campaigns
Consistent with centralizing the City’s customer service functions, the Citizens’ Budget Plan proposes consolidating all citizen outreach functions. Under this reorganization, public affairs would be managed using integrated outreach campaigns—with information provided to the public on a variety of City programs. This reform would allow the City to reduce the 186 public affairs positions by 15 percent.