The City of Edinburgh Council’s customer services strategy fits in with the Smart Cities vision, as the co-design of services with our customers is an important part of our strategy. A number of projects are underway in the Council – including the Smart Cities pilots listed below – to deliver our customer services strategy and improve the council’s services.
The Business Process Change pilot will incorporate both lean thinking and customer journey mapping approaches into a strategy to improve our internal business processes. The approach is being trialled in the Council’s Revenues and Benefits Division. As well as aiming to identify measurable process improvements, the pilot is developing training and tools which will be used across the Council to support business process change. This will allow us to deliver other customer service process reviews and to share our methodologies with Smart Cities partners.
The procurement and development of a new Internet presence for the City of Edinburgh Council will give us the capability to deliver a more useful, accessible and usable website with up to date, reliable and accurate information. The ability to complete transactions online requires a new platform that is both adaptable and scalable to incorporate future innovations and new technologies.
The Wireless Service pilot has trialled the provision of free wireless internet access for citizens in some of the City’s local libraries. The lessons learned from this experience will be shared with all Smart Cities partners and, once evaluated, may lead to more wireless service provision across the City.