CITY WEB SITE TAKES SERVICE TO NEW LEVELS
SAN RAMON: SYSTEM ALLOWS CITIZENS TO COMPLAIN, COMMENT ONLINE, TRACK RESPONSES WITHIN GOVERNMENT

By Scott Marshall
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

SAN RAMON - During the day and even in the dead of night they e-mail, ultimately zeroing in on the computer screen of someone in San Ramon city government. They complain, comment, compliment and even wax eloquent on all manner of things, including - but not limited to - about 150 topics ranging from barking dogs to code enforcement to streets and public works. E-mailers can also create their own topic and go from there..

Residents, city staffers and even City Council members have embraced a two-way Web-based communication system with the city. This Citizen Request Management system has logged more than 3,300 requests over the past year.

"We try to please everybody," said Rosemary Co, the city's Web manager. From Jan. 1, 2005 through this past Jan. 19, the city received 1,871 requests from the public through the system, and all but 44 were "closed," or resolved. The system logged 1,462 internal requests from employees, City Council members and others .

The topics most frequently mentioned in e-mails to the request management system, both internally and from the general public, included building maintenance, miscellaneous public services, computer and tech support, street lights, park maintenance, custodial issues and sidewalk repairs.

The city closes most requests within a day; 93 percent are closed within two weeks. Since San Ramon's system was launched in 2004, it has helped shorten city response times to questions, according to Pleasanton-based Government Outreach, the company that created it.

More than 90 percent of the city's contacts are completed within the city-instituted time frame -- seven days. If a problem isn't resolved or a question isn't answered in seven days, the person responsible for resolving it gets a reminder and Co is notified. If resolution isn't achieved in 10 days, then a department head gets involved.

The system, operated remotely from Government Outreach's office in Pleasanton, costs about $1,000. Development began in 2003 with detailed studies of how local governments could adapt technology long a mainstay of the private sector. The system has since spread to some 16 public entities, said GO founder and president Kendall Smith.

"Local governments and cities typically don't have a large IT staff, so they wanted something extremely easy," Smith said. "The systems that were typically being sold were expensive and large scale, they didn't have a really good citizen or public access point." .

San Ramon's IT staff monitors the city's Web site constantly to ensure that the CRM system is available and that requests are routed immediately to specific staff members. "It's Web-based, it doesn't require software to be installed on the citizens' or the cities' computers," which IT professionals prefer, Smith said. "We do all the hosting remotely." One of the key reasons for the program's success is that Co can talk directly with a requester by e-mail, while the request is pending, and city staff members can discuss a specific request among themselves .

"The system is evolving as we find other things we need the CRM to do," said Stephen Keagy, the city's information technology manager.

San Ramon residents have embraced the system because they have high expectations in communication with the city as they do when - for instance, shopping online or tracking a mail order. Co and Keagy can crunch the data on how city resources are used and how the city responds to specific problems, and department heads and the City Council review them. "Customer service is a big issue," said Scott Summerfield, a Government Outreach vice president. "They never got a call back, never knew if it was followed up on or if it was completed, which led to frustration," he said. "With this, people can track requests."

The system also can be used to spot trends by neighborhoods or problem areas, and the city can post updates and current information on the Web site.

The city is also setting up a system to route citizen requests through staff members to contractors who perform work, Co said.

Every e-mail is sent to someone, even when the topic is more esoteric than concrete. One e-mailer wrote to complain about motorists who talk on cell phones while they drive, Co recalled. "I thought that was kind of a policy question, so I sent it to Herb (Moniz, the city manager)," Co said. Not long afterward, city employees got a memo restricting cell phone use for driving on city business, except in emergencies.