e-governance and citizen information - Universitat Oberta de ...

E-governance and Citizen Information 121 Relationship with Citizens7.5. The Public/Private Relationship in Citizen Information ChannelsOne clear effect of the processes of outsourcing linked to communication channels withcitizens is that contact between citizens and the Public Administration is often mediatedby private companies – a factor that is usually justified by the impossibility of providing 24-hour Citizen Information services. When citizens call one of the Administration's CitizenInformation lines, they are in fact speaking to an employee of a private company that is incharge of call management, according to a contract drawn up with the administration. Thissituation, common in other public services (grant-maintained schools, hospitals, etc.) wasnot, until recently, common in the area of Citizen Information channels.Considering the types of contracts that these companies have with the administration, the indexof queries attended is one of the principal evaluation axes for these services – and theeconomic compensation they receive. Since this index is also often used by the administrationsas a parameter to determine the quality of their channels, the result is a tendency toincrease the number of queries carried out.Even so, the fact that for certain services the number of queries (by telephone, online visitsor face to face consultations) is not necessarily a reliable indicator of success, still less whenit is increasingly obvious that good work done in the integration of the back office and simplifyingprocedures can lead to a reduction in the number of queries, often comes under discussion.It is, in this way, ever more important to establish indicators and evaluation systemsbetter suited to measuring the quality of Citizen Information services.Another notable phenomenon is the tendency to increase the range of information the administrationprovides. Increasingly, administrations – and this is clearly the case with theGeneralitat – show an inclination to give information about services and areas that are notdirectly related to the Administration and its areas of responsibility (leisure, the services ofother administrations, etc.). In other words, that the volume of information supplied by theAdministration through its channels has not grown only because of the possibility of openinginternal databases to the outside (a theme clearly highlighted by the literature), but also dueto the tendency to include information which is traditionally the scope of other agencies. Thisfact occurs because of the explicit will to respond to the majority of queries received (andcitizens often make no distinction between those aspects that fall strictly within the scope ofthe Administration and those that do not) and for the associated need to improve the externalimage of the Administration by emphasising its vocation to serve the public effectively.The problem is that it produces a bit of a vicious circle: if the range of information is broadened,the number of queries increases too, efficiency suffers (and the efficiency of Citizenhttp://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic