This is a view of several of our service counters here at City Center. The City designed its City Center service counters in the early 1990’s at a time when the development of the community was going a full throttle. The counters were designed for a higher level of walk-up traffic than we have in 2005. Add to that the impact of the City’s efforts to push more and more of its services on to the Internet and you’ve got a situation worth taking a look at: Does the City still require the same number and type of service counters staffed by the same number and type of people today that we had ten years ago?
It is important for the City to continually evaluate and reevaluate how it can improve our services for our citizens. During the past four years, the City has made significant improvements to the cost and convenience of our services by making more city services available on the Internet. That trend will continue in the future. As we continue to wrestle with the challenge of determining how and when to move additional city services to the Internet, we must also take a look at how we adjust our employee composition and workplace in response to the changes we are making to the manner in which we provide our services.
We have designed and launched an internal study project that I have titled the �e-Services Response Project�.The purpose of this project will be to examine the impact on our workforce and workplace of providing more of our services on the Internet. The project will review the various services that are currently offered by the City on the Internet and suggest other City services that might also be enhanced by providing citizen access to them on the Internet as well. The project will also include recommendations on how we should adjust the composition of our workforce and the structure of our workplace to take full operational advantage of this trend.
The e-Services Response Project is about improving our cost efficiency and our service effectiveness, but it’s not about job reduction. I do not plan to use the results of this project as “cover” to lay-off any of our current employees. It is possible, however, that this project will lead to changes in the way that City provides services, and that these changes may include employee retraining or changes in daily duties.
A likely outcome of this project is a realization that we may need to restructure our employee work assignments. Efficiencies in one area may free up resources that can be assigned to other service areas or for new intitiatives. If we can achieve a zero net increase in our total employee headcount over the next five years, we will have really accomplished something. We’ve got a pretty good group of employees here that I’d like to keep together. If we can accomplish that through the use of retraining or reeducation, then we’ll do that.
Improving efficiency. Improving effectiveness. Putting the right people in the right jobs. These are the goals of the e-Services Response Project. Look for the delivery of the report in September 2005.
