Local governments have many vital goals, such as providing social welfare services, maintaining parks, managing local public transportation and more. However, perhaps the most important goal of local governments is upholding the satisfaction of their citizens. Governments can rise and fall based on this crucial metric. There have been countless examples throughout history of governments who had grand ambitions, but who failed because they didn’t remember this crucial fact. These governments didn’t necessarily not care about the satisfaction of their constituents; they just forgot the importance of monitoring it on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, constituent happiness can be a difficult metric to maintain if your government is running a paper-based or outdated electronic records management system. Constituents often have problems such as:
- Receiving incorrect or incomplete documentation. This can be due to file mishandling, information going to the wrong person, or hasty responses (because governments can be under pressure to remain compliant with legislation which requires government responses to requests within a certain period of time).
- Having to make repeat trips to city hall in order to request information, obtain documentation, or update records. This is especially difficult for citizens who may have to take time off of work to travel to city hall during working hours and for those who have mobility difficulties.
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Being told that information has been lost or is inaccessible. This can be due to records damaged due to fire, flood or a litany of other reasons.
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Slow response times to their general inquiries and freedom of information requests. In a world where information is generally transferred immediately through tools such as email and search engines, waiting 2 weeks can seem like a lifetime.
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Feeling dissatisfied with the fact that their government isn’t environmentally friendly. With an increasingly eco-friendly constituency, this is a rising problem.
However, these problems are all solvable with Ricoh’s customized local government solutions. Ricoh can help by providing:
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Off-site or on-site digitization of paper records. Records will be stored in our solution’s secure electronic repository in an intuitive file structure and will be automatically retained in accordance with legislation requirements. Employees will be able to search for and retrieve documents within seconds instead of hours.
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An end to end mobile-friendly process management system through which employees can securely access data and work on their mobile devices. This ability can significantly improve response times. Ricoh can also implement a mobile-friendly public facing system through which citizens can access vital government services. Citizens are increasingly demanding this feature of “e-government”.
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Creation of customized automated business processes. Through these processes employees will be automatically notified when they are needed. For example, in responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the pertinent departments from whom information is required will be automatically notified and when they have completed their tasks, the information will be sent to the appropriate person. Employees will also receive alerts based on how long they are taking in the process so that compliance requirements can be met. This information will be logged so a further optimized process can be developed in the future.
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Development of online public-facing forms. These will be developed through a streamlined business process where employees can submit created forms, the IT department can review them for usability and the FOIP coordinator can ensure compliance. We can customize this process to meet the governments needs and currently available staff resources.
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Integration with existing software and hardware so that the transition process goes as smoothly as possible. We will adapt our solution to fit your government’s needs and current software and hardware. Governments often have systems in place for different processes and we ensure that our solution will work with these systems, and not against them. We have a team of professionals who have created custom solutions for local governments across Canada.
Our solutions optimize workflows and not only make constituents more satisfied but employees as well. Employees will have the ability to work remotely on their own devices or through their mobile phone and will no longer have to spend hours searching for and retrieving documents. As numerous studies show, happier employees equal more productive employees.
Ricoh has over a decade of experience in the local government sector and we excel in making our clients happy. Take the first step to a happier constituency. |
