Partners from the Smart Cities project met in Edinburgh on March 2nd and 3rd to review progress in developing customer contact centres in their municipalities, and to plan the production of a guide to customer contact centres for municipalities.

Following the appoach set out in the Dutch 'Answer' model, five municipalities volunteered to lead on the five key aspects of developing customer service centres:

1. Products/Services/Channels - Leiedal
2. Process and Governance - Kortrijk
3. Systems and Information - Karlstad
4. Leadership and Employees - Kristiansand
5. Delivery of Achievements - Groningen

A timeframe was also agreed for the production of the contact centre guide:

1. March 2010: develop a format to collect content for the guide
2. April/May 2010: collect content on the Smart Cities wiki, identify best practice
3. May 2010: interview partners at the Kristiansand steering committee
4. June/November 2010: finish the production of content, identify additional relevant material (e.g. on trends and change management), integrate research briefs and findings from SCRAN into the document, finalise text
5. 2011: publish final document, produce website with relevant material