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Health & Fitness

Local Government Idea #1: A Single "Customer Service" Office

Instead of having to decide which of five or more separate town departments to visit for routine business with the Town, how about a single Customer Service desk?

For quite a few years we've heard government officials at all levels talking about "efficiency". Here's one idea for town governments, like Belmont. It would never fly, but I'd like to think about it anyway:

Provide a single public-facing presence and turn almost everything else into back-office functions. Think of it as "Belmont customer service", where staff is trained in what the public ("customers") need most, and other subject matter experts in their respective departments could concentrate on their functions.

Over the past 26 years, in three different towns (Watertown, Arlington, Belmont), here are the in-person interactions I recall having had in the respective Town Halls:

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  • Get a marriage license
  • Register to vote and change voter registration info
  • Sign up and pay for recreation programs (a couple times per year when my kids were younger)
  • Renew a passport
  • Apply for property tax abatement
  • Turn in papers for running for office (School Committee and Town Meeting)
  • Pay for a building permit
  • Pay property tax
  • Buy a new recycling bin
  • Pay parking ticket

All of these were completely routine and involved me providing information (on paper forms), signature, and payments, and the town department providing information, a receipt, or a pool tag. While more complex question could arise, I think most Town Hall employees could have handled any of those simple interactions. The small fraction of more complex interactions could then be deferred to someone with more expertise in a specific department, or "customer service" could call that department on-the-spot.

Some benefits would be:

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  • It is simpler for the public. We would not have to know which department visit - we should not have to.
  • A combined/shared service staff would presumably be large enough that hours could be expanded to cover when customers - you and I - would be want to access them, like before and after work.
  • Towns could provide a single office space for the public interaction. I always find a separate counter with sliding glass window for each department rather silly.
  • Back office functions could be anywhere, whether other town buildings, outsourced completely, or some staff could work from home.

This, in no way, is meant to reflect negatively on any staff in any town. I like to think of it as "if I got to re-design from scratch my interactions with town governments, what would I do?"

Of course this would involve some interesting discussions and battles among the departmental silos. The first question might be very basic: why are there so many distinct departments at all?

I know you're thinking, "what about online transactions?" Yes, some could be done that way, and I do that. But many require an actual signature, and governments have generally not reached the world of electronic signatures yet. I'll go into online services more in a later posting.

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