This week the LIPSE team is happy to post a short article written by guest blogger Bart Weekers, parliamentary Ombudsman of the Flemish Government (governing 6 million Flemings in the northern part of Belgium).
Weighing up the service
By Bart Weekers (Flemish Ombudsman)
[for Dutch version click here]
As readers of this blog are undoubtedly aware, a government ombudsman tries to mediate at the request of a citizen, who is dissatisfied with the treatment that s/he is getting from a governmental department. The winning asset of the ombudsman in that respect is his independence, combined with his mediation expertise and his legal authority.
But whenever possible such an ombudsman also tries to draw lessons from cases in which he mediates. In doing so, he tries to help improve the overall service provided by his government. In this blog, I would like to go over the methods that the Flemish ombudsman uses to improve government services. By way of illustration, I shall use the case of what we in Flanders refer to as the “zero, first and second line”: the graduated system that the Flemish government uses in its communication with citizens.
The hotline of hotlines
In recent years, we in Flanders have become increasingly aware that better services start at the zero line: the level at which the government communicates actively with its citizens, and provides an answer to individual questions that citizens put to the government about their own concrete situation.
The two most prominent instruments of my Flemish government to that end are an informative website, with 4.5 million visitors per year (www.vlaanderen.be) and a toll-free hotline that receives more than 1 million questions per year via telephone, e-mail and chat (www.vlaamseinfolijn.be). Furthermore, the ombudsman knows all too well that a special-purpose line, such as a (preventive anti-) suicide line, requires a completely different approach than a general hotline. This knowledge has not, however, prevented us from having long advocated for maximum integration of all possible government communication. The ombudsman illustrated his plea with the argument of being fed up with always having to act as the ultimate “hotline of hotlines”, which must time and again, explain anew to citizens which specialised hotline deals precisely with the very problem that citizen happens to have and ultimately does not serve the citizen. Admittedly, that plea by the ombudsman went “too far” because it is clearly not possible to integrate all communication through one or two general channels. We stuck to the plea nonetheless and in the meantime we can see that it has borne fruit.
Visitor figures on the two aforementioned central channels have been going up year after year. And the additional creation of new, specific, sub-hotlines has in the meantime acquired taboo status. And when existing, isolated lines run into problems, the policy now addresses those problems, with integration. That is currently the case for the helpline devoted to care for the elderly. The minister responsible for welfare informed parliament very recently that he was looking into how he could merge that helpline for senior citizens with the hotline for young people, for instance. Needless to say, the ombudsman does not get such processes going on his own; there were also others with the same plea as the ombudsman. But at the same time, it is also a good thing to do more oneself than “just plea.” Since 2012, when citizens pick up the telephone and call the ombudsman, they no longer reach a special line of the ombudsman, for the telephone has in fact been brought under the aforementioned toll-free general hotline www.vlaamseinfolijn.be
You read correctly: the hotline of the government itself now answers countless questions for information, which people used to put to the ombudsman. This is an innovation because it creates a level of communications integration we had not tried earlier. We have been doing that for three years and I have never heard a complaint about it. Not from the callers concerned, but also not from my professional stakeholders, starting with my own team. In no way do we have the feeling that we have cut off the citizen or given up our own independence from other government branches.
Complaints help improve service quality. We also do something comparable with what is known as the first line, i.e. my government’s complaint and customer services. In 2014, they processed 51,110 complaints in all. Only when the complainants do not get a satisfactory result on that first line, can they turn to the second line of the ombudsman.
We have called consistently for more integration of these “first line” complaints and customer services also. When I assumed my duties at the end of 2010, I found a fragmented landscape of dozens of customer services. And they all seemed to operate on their own island. For instance, I saw a commercial gesture for a passenger, who missed his bus in the East of the country. At the same time, another passenger, who missed his bus 100 km away to the West, was just sent packing.
Here once again we have sometimes exaggerated in our focus on integration, because the ombudsman is well aware here too that a complaint about a road, does not necessarily require the same approach as a complaint about a bus on that road. But once again, we did not react with just words; we have produced results. The bus company in the meantime has one central customer service, with one commercial policy for the entire country. And recent reporting shows how the operations of the customer services are getting increasingly more integrated in the government’s general quality policy.
The ombudsman quite deliberately does not swat every bug in sight. If, for example, a major government department is currently grappling with problems relating to a massive digitising project, we will not satisfy citizen complaints that one or another high accessibility standard has been temporarily infringed. We do explain the work in progress but expect a little empathy from the citizen. Behind the scenes, we keep an eye on the approach to problems, as we did in the previous months for instance, for the digitisation in childcare.
source: http://www.illustration.com.au
I would like to close by taking the two examples to a more abstract level. And what else can I say, other than that this aspect of my work too is always a matter of “weighing things up”? Sometimes, the ombudsman will continue to hammer hard and consistently on some points of principle, but at other times, pragmatism will be needed to get things moving.
Bart Weekers
Flemish Ombudsman
Facebook: fb/vlaamsombudsman
@vlaamsombudsman
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