CITIZENS´ SERVICE BUREAU

Aiming at the best possible service of the citizens and the facilitation of their contact with the Municipality we proceeded in 1997 to the establishment of the Citizens´ Service Bureau which in the meantime was certified with the ΙSO 9001:2000 and recorded as the first practice being certified with the quality award.

The Citizens´ Service Bureau will represent Cyprus in the 4th Quality Conference for Public Administration in the EU in Tampere, Finland as the Best Practice Case.

The basic priority of the Citizens´ Service Bureau, is the direct promotion of complaints, charges, problems and applications of the citizens to the corresponding Departments of the Municipality which will in turn examine and process them. The Office aims also at sensitising the citizens and involve them in the process of detecting and reporting sources of problems for which the Municipality has to take action.

The Citizens´ Service Bureau is responsible for:

• providing the mechanism to the citizens of Strovolos to contact and express their complaints/demands and to claim the right of service,

• accepting the public, giving guidance and answering questions that bother the citizens as well as informing them on several processing issues and on the Legislation,

• coordinating and monitoring the proccesing of the problems/complaints and their resolution and informing the General Management for any delays.
  

The Citizens´ Service Bureau also:

• observes and analyzes statistical elements that are related with the type of complaints, the nature and the time of their submission as well as the categories of complaints and demands,

• suggests ways of preventive action aiming at the prevention of the appearance of demands or complaints on behalf of the public by addressing their needs in advance as much as possible,

• evaluates the effectiveness of the Departments and suggests ways of achieving a higher level of service,

• examines the complaints of the public that are assigned to it and it submits reports and suggestions,

• is responsible for the preparation and submission to the General Management of an annual report regarding the work of the Citizens´ Service Bureau.

We wanted an office that would give the following in an organised and efficient way:

• give the citizen the opportunity to speak in order to express his complaints, demands and/or to claim for the right of being served,

• record and categorize per Department the various demands of the citizens,

• send the demands of citizens to the corresponding Departments of the Municipality so as to be taken care of and then to monitor their processing,

• observe and analyze statistical elements which are related with the nature and the categories of the demands,

• suggest and/or provide the possibility of preventive action in order to prevent the appearance of demands and/or complaints on behalf of the citizens,

• evaluate the effectiveness and the behavior of the Departments and suggest ways of achieving a higher level of service.

The institution of measurable goals/indicators of quality as this is required by the revised model of 2000 as well as the fact that in February 2006 another practice that is used by the Municipality called “System of Prevention and Environmental Information” along with some other Departments of the Municipal Service have been certified on the basis of this model, it is expected that the quality of service is going to be improved even more.

In order to measure the effectiveness of the practice that we follow, we keep records regarding the kind of the complaints submitted, their number, their nature and the time required for their settlement and we set quantitave and qualitative goals which aim at its improvement .

An annual research is made by a private company in order to find out the degree of satisfaction of the citizens towards the Citizens´ Service Bureau. The research conducted in November 2005 showed an improvement in comparison to the year before.

- the citizens´ satisfaction regarding the information provided to them on the examination of their complaints increased from 3,46 to 3,66

• their satisfaction regarding the time necessary to solve their problems increased from 2,80 to 2,90

• their satisfaction regarding the processing/solution of their problems increased from 2,96 to 3,13.

This research also showed an importan increase to the citizens´ percentage (from 64% to 73%) who when asked said that they would prefer to visit the Citizens´ Service Bureau in order to report their problems rather than visiting separately the different Departments of the Municipality.

When the Citizens´ Service Bureau was established, there was nowhere else in the Public Service any other similar Citizens´ Service Bureau or department.

The Municipality of Strovolos has been the pioneer, the first Municipality that implemented this practice which then other Municipalities followed after visiting and examining our own.

In addition, the Government has also moved into establishing a similar Bureau in the capital, years after Strovolos Municipality´s case.

[Home page] [Up]