INSIGHT
In the Know
Become a Learning Organization Now or Your Knowledge Will Soon Walk Out the Door

Terry Brueck President and CEO Mary Dailey-Fischer Principal Consultant

If the front entrance to your facility is not equipped with a revolving door, you may want to install one in the near future. You’re going to need it.

Once the workforce transition that’s beginning to strike North American utilities really gets ramped up, your management team and workforce will likely undergo the most dramatic transformation to date. Long-time employees will retire in droves. New employees will come through the door to replace them, but many won’t stay long. Some will need remedial language training and skill development. Others will have very different expectations from their predecessors. All will expect fairness and respect.

Unless your utility takes steps now to become a Learning Organization and ensure continuity of leadership, the accumulated knowledge of the past few decades is going to walk right out that revolving door, too.

As the baby boomer generation reaches retirement age, utilities need to take action now to successfully sustain their organizations through the transition ahead.

What is a Learning Organization?

All four levels of learning must be present to be a Learning Organization.

A learning organization consists of four levels of learning: Individual, Leader, Team, and Organization. To become a true learning organization, all four related and interdependent levels must exist.

There are a variety of elements that characterize these forward-thinking organizations. For example, employees understand their role and how it ‘fits’ in with the big picture. There are ample opportunities for self-development. Teams are formed for projects and problem solving. And managers/leaders are teachers, facilitators, coaches, and mentors.

Learning organizations utilize technology to share relevant information, and employees feel comfortable with confrontation and dialogue. Success is shared and recognized. Authority is decentralized and delegated. People feel free to take risks and generally practice mutual respect.

Does This Sound Like Your Organization?

If not, you need to take a good long look in the mirror, because your road ahead is almost certain to be bumpy. Now is the time to establish new, more effective hiring practices as well as approaches to helping new employees adjust.

The transition to a true learning environment takes time, intent, and patience. Determining the degree to which a utility is a learning organization can best begin with an assessment of where you are now. This will help the organization to:

• Define critical talent strengths and needs
• Target leadership development where it counts most
• Create ways to mentor for success
• Establish a practical approach for succession planning and management

The next step is developing an action plan to move along the learning organization continuum. You know the leaders of your organization will depart in the next five to 10 years, and you are well aware of the valuable skills and knowledge they provide today. To ensure that value does not disappear altogether, mechanisms must be put in place to pass knowledge on.

By developing new leaders today, the organization will make a giant leap forward for tomorrow. You know your workforce will undergo extraordinary change over the next few years. Gender, ethnicity, skills, behaviors, and employee expectations will be drastically different from past history. It’s what you do to prepare for these changes that matters most.

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FORESIGHT
Fear and Trembling
No Wonder Utility Executives Stay Awake at Night Worrying About Their CIS Project

Melanie Rettie Vice President and Principal Consultant

Ask most water utility executives how they feel about implementing a new Customer Information System (CIS) and the response may be accompanied by that ‘deer in the headlights’ look. Thanks to a number of highly-visible failures, utility managers perceive CIS implementation as a high-risk venture.

Is that perception valid? That was one question the AWWA Research Foundation (AwwaRF) wanted to answer with its recent in-depth research project “Effective Practices to Select, Acquire, and Implement a Utility CIS.” Led by EMA, the project was sponsored by the City of Cleveland (OH) Division of Water and co-sponsored by the Honolulu (HI) Board of Water Supply. Ten other utilities participated in the research, which surveyed more than 350 North American utilities.

What wasn’t up for discussion was the importance of a quality CIS. It is the system that enables the utility to enroll new customers, generate bills, manage credit and collections, track water consumption, track and manage meters, handle customer inquiries, complaints, and service orders, and provide call center support. The level of complexity grows with multiple billing structures, varied rates, numerous billing cycles and integration with other enterprise systems.

When failure might mean finding yourself in the unemployment line, it’s no wonder utility managers stay awake at night worrying.

The five research objectives were aimed at creating a road map for CIS implementation.

Direction and Guidance for Utilities

With fear comes paralysis. Some utilities are delaying a CIS replacement or upgrade until a silver bullet lands on their doorstep. Others are moving forward but want to improve their odds of success.

The purpose of the AwwaRF research project was to identify and document water utility practices that have resulted in successful CIS projects. Focusing on business practices, not current technology, the project was designed to provide utilities with direction and guidance on business practices to define CIS requirements, evaluate alternatives, choose a solution, and then implement it.

Several themes emerged.

First, water utilities have been replacing legacy systems since 1990 at an increasing rate. The rate may have spiked because of Y2K but the pace of change has held steady ever since. Second, CIS projects have become less risky over time thanks to better technology, improved vendor package capabilities, and enhanced ability of utilities to handle complex technology projects. In spite of these gains, only 35 percent of CIS projects studied were considered successful, 11 percent failed, and 54 percent fell somewhere in between.

Perhaps most revealing, research indicates that there is a significantly higher risk of failure for custom implementations. Some 70 percent of failed projects were custom-developed. Among successful respondents, there were five common elements:

• CIS team must have the expertise and experience to pull the project off
• Utility needs to be realistic about its capacity to handle a new CIS
• Formal project management methods should be used to manage the project
• Risk management throughout is crucial
• Go-live plan must be jointly developed with both vendor and consultant

This research confirms what savvy utility managers already knew – there is no silver bullet. Fortunately, there are multiple sound business practices that can make a difference. By applying these findings and recommendations, the utility can build the foundation for a successful CIS project that will help meet escalating customer demands.

For more on project methodology and detailed results, please request a copy of the report by emailing info@ema-inc.com

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Q & A INTERVIEW
Asset Management
Defining the Path Forward

When The Clean Water and Drinking Water Infrastructure Gap Analysis was published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2002, it offered a comprehensive national-level assessment of the gap between infrastructure needs and funding to meet those needs – estimated to be in excess of $500 billion. Steve Allbee, of the EPA, was the principal author of the report. Three years have passed since it sent ripples through the water and wastewater industry, and Allbee has shifted his focus to the advanced asset management techniques that are helping to respond. EMA asked Allbee for an update on the gap and the future of asset management.

Strategic Asset Management is the critical link in balancing delivery costs to achieve customer satisfaction.

What do you see as the future of the water/wastewater industry? What are the challenges?

What utilities are faced with, in a nutshell, is increasing aggregate demand for water and wastewater, diminishing available resources, a leveling off of production efficiencies, increasing output restrictions, and aging infrastructure. What that means is that these organizations are faced with increasingly expensive treatment options. On the other side of the equation, they’ve got an aging customer base with more folks on fixed income, a diminishing technical labor pool, more sophisticated plants, there is an outflow of knowledge with the retiring labor base, and there is increasing resistance to rate increases at the local level. These folks are fundamentally managing in a much more complex environment.

What role does the EPA play in this?

Let me start by saying that I recognize that an environmental regulator and a service provider do not always have the same aims and sometimes they can be in conflict. In the case of asset management, I see the EPA as a collaborator and an advocate. I think the leaders, by definition, have to be the people who own and operate these systems. We recognize that utilities are seriously challenged, and we realize they are going to have to do a lot of additional things in order to respond to those challenges. We think that for the most part the resources to meet those challenges are going to be derived from local sources as they have always been. We don’t see this moving in the direction of a regulatory structure for asset management but more as a partnership. We’re all trying to pursue best and appropriate practices, and we’re trying to get good information out about what those practices are.

What has changed since 2002? What efforts have you seen utilities make?

There are four phenomena that are playing out in advanced asset management practices in the United States. The first is a grassroots movement where there are a significant and growing number of leading-edge utilities proceeding with advanced asset management undertakings. The second one is what I would call an awakening in awareness and that’s coming about because we at EPA, as well as a lot of other folks across the country, have been doing a lot of training exercises and workshops to make sure that more folks in the water and wastewater sector are exposed to this knowledge. Third, improved tools and techniques are certainly underway and on the way, and they are all going to have an effect on the ability of utilities to master best and appropriate practices. I think the fourth thing is the growing desire to more effectively coordinate and collaborate and facilitate the transfer of knowledge.

How would you gauge utilities’ current understanding of asset management?

Although there are people who have different definitions, those definitions are not really all that different. They’ll use a different adjective or a different modifier, but basically the idea driving it is how you accomplish a certain level of service at the lowest possible cost. When I think about asset management, I think it’s a business lynchpin to a culture of sustainability. It’s the application of business-like decision rules and processes under a well-thought-out and deliberate strategy for achieving outcomes. It’s a framework to improve service and control cost. It’s thinking about these things much more like a business would.

What is the National Asset Management Steering Committee initiative?

If you look across the world, one of the things that people seem to have in common is a need to have some way to define what is best and appropriate practice. If you don’t define best and appropriate practice, then it becomes what anyone says it is. In Australia and New Zealand, for example, they established the National Asset Management Steering Committee, which was really a compilation of local service providers who started to come to terms with defining best and appropriate practice in greater detail. The idea of a steering committee comes into play if you believe that the people who need to operate the process are the people who own and operate the systems. There has to be some mechanism or forum where these people can work with each other. A successful undertaking would foster the consultation and participation by other stakeholder interests, as well include the consulting community and the federal and state interest. It’s a very collaborative model of leadership.

How can asset management help to close or minimize the gap?

There is a big relationship between the work that I did on the gap and the work I’m now doing on asset management. The gap analysis was about quantitatively defining the challenges ahead – how bad is the problem? – while the asset management work is about defining some of the pathways forward. I don’t contend that asset management is going to fully offset the need for additional resources. These are very long-life assets, and we’re expecting these costs to go up. But new approaches like asset management will produce significant cost savings over the long term. It may make meeting these infrastructure challenges more manageable. In some ways it might shift the point in time when you need to invest. Asset management is basically about doing things at the right time. If you replace an asset too early, you’re wasting money – and if you replace an asset too late, you’re wasting money. What you’re looking for is the capacity to make the best decision you can make about doing this kind of work ‘just in time.’ The other thing you’re trying to do is look at the full range of maintenance, repair, renewal, and replacement options in the same matrix so that you can compare your strategies against the alternatives.

What can the water/wastewater industry do to accelerate the adoption of good asset management practices?

Effective asset management doesn’t happen overnight. I think the pathway to success for advanced asset management is to adopt a framework and a structure. Then you have to go through what I see as a stepped process to really get excellent at it. It goes from where we are now – in our infancy – at the awareness stage to systematic application to base competence. The fourth stage is where you reach a kind of excellence in these tools and techniques and processes. That brings you to the fifth stage which is sustainability. This is a journey of a decade or more. I think that we’ve started down this pathway, and I’m fairly confident that we are going to progress down this pathway, but I think we’re going to go through what amounts to an evolution. It’s not as though we are going to get up tomorrow and everybody is going to be really expert at managing their assets. But over time, we are all going to improve.

Steve Allbee Steve Allbee’s first foray into ‘asset management’ occurred at the age of 17 when he laid his first sewer pipe in St. Paul, MN. Forty years later, he calls himself a “collaborator” working on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to get water and wastewater utilities on the path toward sustainability. “I think we really have to go back to the fundamentals here,” Allbee said. “I’m convinced that we can’t go back to the same approaches that we’ve had for the past 30 years and expect the outcome to be any different. There’s got to be a better way. Let’s get about finding it.

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CUSTOMER STORY
Allegheny County Sanitary Authority
The Bottom Line Is Human Performance:
Iron Will Gets the Job Done in Steel City

Clockwise from top right: Mike Mellish. a 30-year veteran of the wastewater treatment plant, was the first operator at ALCOSAN to run the new Distributed Control System; Pittsburgh is a city that must continually balance tradition and progress; ALCOSAN’s facilities are wedged into a 56-acre triangle on Pittsburgh’s north side bordering the Ohio River; Doug Jackson, the utility’s Manager of Electrical and Control Systems Engineering, orchestrated the DCS project on ALCOSAN’s behalf; Pittsburgh’s historic city neighborhoods, including Brighton Heights, are undergoing an exciting revitalization that has been helped, in part, by odor control efforts.

Any business that delays necessary capital improvements long enough is going to end up addressing them sooner or later. That’s exactly where Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN) found itself 15 years ago.

The Pittsburgh-based wastewater utility had been conducting business as usual for many years without reinvesting in facilities or technology, and its governing board did not have the support needed to raise rates to pay for improvements. The time had come to take action.

Arletta Scott Williams, ALCOSAN Executive Director

“We were at the point where our average daily flow (196 MGD) was bumping right up against our permitted capacity (225 MGD),” said Executive Director Arletta Scott Williams. “We were anticipating the wet weather regulations which we knew would be right upon us. Put it all together and we had to do something.”

Capacity issues and the need to upgrade technology were the impetus for a major capital improvement program. Thanks to its physical location, however, it was ALCOSAN’s formerly shaky relationship with its neighbors that spawned the political will to provide much-needed funding. That’s because the utility is wedged into a triangle of land on the city’s north side that leaves few options for expansion. The 56-acre site is bordered by a steep cliff on one edge, a century-old penitentiary on another, and the Ohio River on the third. Living next door to a wastewater treatment plant, the Brighton Heights neighborhood (see related story below) on top of the cliff had suffered long enough.

“It became clear very early on,” Williams recalled, “that if we were going to take one more drop of sewage into the plant, whether by choice or by requirement, we had to address the odor issue because the neighbors had been forced to deal with it for far too long. We needed to resolve it. It didn’t hurt that the political power had shifted in the City of Pittsburgh, and the mayor was from this general vicinity.”

Automating to Reduce Costs

ALCOSAN was formed in 1946. Its current facilities were equipped with the best available technology when the treatment plant opened in 1959. Today, the utility serves nearly 900,000 people in 83 communities spread over 225 square miles within Allegheny County.

ALCOSAN is in the midst of a 12-year, three-phase, $400 million Capital Improvements Program to address odors, increase treatment capacity, and prepare for wet weather treatment. Multiple consultants have played a role in these improvements, with EMA leading the Distributed Control System (DCS) design and installation expansion. The scope of work included design, installation, and configuration of an Emerson (formerly Westinghouse) Ovation distributed control system, control room design (including operator consoles), integration with ALCOSAN’s business network, and operator training.

Doug Jackson, Manager of Electrical and Control Systems Engineering at ALCOSAN, was the project leader. “A major part of the current capital improvement program was to replace 1970s-era technology,” he explained. “Prior to our first generation 1994 control system installation, we had 1957 vintage equipment running this place. None of it was automated. We had some really antiquated components.”

One goal of the capital improvement plan was to automate as much of the process as possible to reduce operating costs and negate the need for additional manpower in the future.

In going from a largely manual operation to a complex, highly-capable distributed control system, it was important that ALCOSAN not overcomplicate its operations. Mark Hannum, Director of Operations & Maintenance, said the focus was always on analyzing costs versus benefits. “We had to ask ourselves, ‘How does this really play into our future versus being just kind of cool?’ There’s a lot of really cool stuff out there but does it actually save you money on the bottom line?” he asked.

The decision was made to install state-of-the art technology and adopt its full capabilities over time, a prudent course of action in an organization where change would need to occur slowly. It would take an iron will to get the job done in the town history has dubbed ‘Steel City.’

Imagine the challenge of managing a major construction project, training a veteran workforce from scratch in the use of modern technology, simultaneously designing software on the fly on a new platform, and keeping the plant operating smoothly throughout.

“On the dewatering project, I likened it to building a ship in a bottle that already had a ship in it,” Hannum said. “We had to meticulously take out pieces while we added pieces and not lose capacity. That was the most difficult part of the project, integrating the two technologies while operating them simultaneously.”

Not surprisingly, there were hiccups along the way. When Emerson rolled out a new software platform mid-stream, the learning curve became that much steeper for everyone involved. Multiple construction delays, unexpected subsurface conditions, and extensive underground utility work also played a role in delaying completion. At one point, software development was halted for more than a year so that construction could catch up.

“Having never gone through a process like this before, I don’t think I could have spent enough time talking to folks who had been through it,” Jackson said. “Most people – me included – think ‘Oh, I can manage this.’ But it can be overwhelming.”

Getting Operators Involved

Change is almost always onerous in an environment where the average employee is nearing 50 and manual operation of the plant is all he or she has ever known. Some ALCOSAN workers wanted no part of automation. Others were slow to embrace technological change. It took hours of one-on-one time, combined with a persuasive approach, to elicit buy-in from many long-time employees.

“It was a bit of a sales job on my part to get them to try it,” Senior Training Specialist Bob Stimmler admitted.

“We have taken an active role in changing the culture but you can’t be too visible,” Williams said. “If it’s perceived to be something that management wants and needs, there will be a natural resistance to it among the workers.”

Operator attitude – and skill level – was all over the map.

“We’re still trying to overcome that,” Jackson admitted. “Because of the longevity of the people and the lack of job movement, a lot of the bargaining unit personnel have been here for 40 years and had vowed never to use a computer.”

Despite these obstacles, EMA took a proactive approach to acquiring input from ALCOSAN’s operators during development and testing of the software. This method enabled relationships to form between EMA’s configuration staff and the end users. Operators were encouraged to ask questions and provide feedback throughout, allowing for significant transfer of knowledge even before the launch of formal training. In addition to system design and configuration, ALCOSAN relied on EMA to develop training manuals, instructor manuals, and student evaluation tools.

The training program began in 1999. At that point, the average ALCOSAN operator had never held a mouse or used a Windows PC. In fact, many workers had transferred out of those departments that first automated in the early 1990s to avoid having to learn how to use the new technology.

“Computers scare a lot of the older guys,” admitted DCS Operator Mike Mellish, a 30-year veteran of the plant and the first operator to run the new system. “They were never around computers. I can see that for the younger generation coming up, this is no problem. To them it’s like playing a big video game. To the older guys it was all kind of mysterious.”

The key in training was avoiding information overload, the ‘too much, too soon’ scenario. “We can spend millions of dollars on this stuff but the bottom line is human performance,” Stimmler said. “People agree with that in concept but they tend to get lost and forget when they are designing things.”

A third party was employed to conduct most of the training. While the program design and documentation were sound, it took time for the trainer to get up to speed on the nuances of running a wastewater operation. Once that situation was rectified, the training went relatively smoothly.

As soon as the DCS went into operation, it didn’t take long for Jackson and his colleagues to realize that the long journey had been worth it, having led ALCOSAN to a better place. “In the end, we are happy,” he said. “The product that we have and the reliability have been world class. From that standpoint I couldn’t be happier.”

The control system offers ALCOSAN far-reaching capabilities to better manage operations and analyze data. Hannum calls the amount of data “mind-boggling.” With real-time access to information, operators can now respond quickly to problems, often anticipating problems before they occur. The next step is additional operator training on how to interpret and respond to data.

A Little Help From Your Friends

Senior Training Specialist Bob Stimmler ensured that ALCOSAN’S control system operators were not subjected to information overload during the early stages of the training process.

Hindsight being 20-20, Jackson wishes he’d had a little more help from his friends in the wastewater industry. Benchmarking other utilities, with experience on similar projects, would have been invaluable, he said. Unfortunately, ALCOSAN’s control system was built on an entirely new platform and everyone involved – the owner, consultants, and the manufacturer – started over from scratch. Now Jackson finds himself offering others advice on how to make a large DCS project work.

“People need to take advantage of the resources that are out there to avoid making the same mistakes others have made,” he said. “Talk to other owners. Go see the manufacturer. Touch it, feel it, get to use systems that are comparable. Then really define and refine what your initial approach might be. But you’re still going to have to be flexible.”

For ALCOSAN’S Director of Engineering, David Borneman, communication and a solid understanding of what the operator needs is fundamental. “It’s virtually limitless as far as what the capabilities of the technology are,” he said. “It still comes back to the human being using the system.”

“You can’t spend enough time on training,” Jackson added. “I initially got calls in the middle of the night because guys maybe didn’t pick up all the details in the training or missed part of the training.”

The Evolution Continues

Any time utility leaders embark on major capital improvements, they walk a fine line between the need for new technology and the realities of budgets, timelines, and human foibles. In Pittsburgh, fiscal constraints and the influence of an aging population are always a factor. So, too, are the realities of politics and customer expectations.

Now the utility is facing the prospect of even further capital investment as it attempts to appease the EPA’s demands for improved wet weather capacity. The community must figure out how to foot another big bill.

“This plant went into operation in 1959. That was the year before I was born,” Williams said. “It’s a long time to me, but for a lot of people in this region, they can remember what the rivers looked like, what the streams looked like, how they would never go near them. This is light years away from what they were accustomed to. They may not see the need to upgrade yet again.”

“This business is an evolution,” Hannum said. “Very qualified individuals make the best engineering and scientific decisions based on the economics of the day. We’ll do the same.“

The Sweet Smell of Success For nearly 60 years, Pittsburgh’s Brighton Heights was typical of the streetcar neighborhoods where America’s steelworkers lived. Full of sturdy brick dwellings with charming front porches, the hilltop enclave boasted spectacular views of the Ohio River and the Pittsburgh skyline. But in 1959, an ill-mannered neighbor moved in at the bottom of the hill, and that’s when the trouble began. By the 1980s, Brighton Heights residents lodged more than 300 formal odor complaints a year against ALCOSAN. “Of course, for every one person who will actually place a complaint there’s probably another hundred or so who are walking around just grousing about it,” said Arletta Scott Williams, the utility’s Executive Director. That began to change in the 1990s as part of ALCOSAN’s capital improvement program, which included massive odor-control measures. By 1999, just 21 odor complaints were registered, and 11 of those were made by one persistent resident. “That,” Williams said, “is a significant improvement.” By investing in significant efforts to control odor, ALCOSAN has improved its image with its neighbors. The number of annual odor complaints plummeted from more than 300 per year in the 1980s to just 21 in 1999. Of those 21, 11 were registered by one individual resident of the Brighton Heights neighborhood. The impact on ALCOSAN’s reputation is telling, too. Today, property values are on the rise in Brighton Heights, and the neighborhood is being revitalized. Odor is no longer a major issue, and residents have a better appreciation for the work being done at ALCOSAN. Inside the plant, there has also been a shift. “It is a cultural change,” Williams explained. “When you talk about spending $20 million on odor control it begins to change the mentality of how you deal with odor. For a long time, the attitude was, ‘This isn’t a perfume factory. Just deal with it.’ We have started to change that kind of thinking.” A proactive public relations program, enormous investments in technology, and a fresh approach to management have altered the utility’s reputation in the community. “Externally I think we’re seen as more state-of-the-art than we ever were before,” Williams said. “We’ve been visible. We’ve done a lot of tours and had a lot of media coverage. I think it’s elevated the perception of the service we provide. Internally, it’s the same thing really. It’s elevated everybody’s expectations for themselves and one another. People have realized that they can do much more than they ever thought they could.”

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e-FLUENT
Dialing 311
It Takes More Than Just an Investment in New Technology to Implement One-Call Service Delivery

Judith Cascio Vice President and Principal Consultant

“Hey!” barks the irritated citizen. “When are you going to fix that pothole?” It’s a familiar refrain for beleaguered civic employees and no wonder. After wading through the telephone directory in a futile attempt to determine who fixes potholes, being transferred two or three times and sitting on hold for an eternity, Joe Citizen is steamed. It is a familiar scenario that is repeated daily across America.

Fortunately, some cities are moving in a new, more citizen-friendly direction.

Integrated 311 technology, combined with organizational change and enhanced business practices, is transforming the way cities provide service. By implementing one-call service delivery – commonly called 311 – government is closing the gap between customer expectations and actual results.

More Than Just a Telephone Number

The reality in most public service organizations is that employee frustration mirrors citizen discontent. Outmoded service delivery models simply aren’t equipped to deal with contemporary demands. As customer expectations soar and resources shrink, many jurisdictions see 311 as the savior.

The solution, however, is not about technology and 311 is more than just a telephone number. In fact, most cities already have the technological capacity to implement one-call service delivery. What they lack is an understanding of the organizational changes necessary to support the initiative and the “back-end” systems and processes to carry it out.

Get it right and a call center with an accompanying Internet presence becomes a one-stop shop for customer inquiries, online payment options, work order status reports, and new work requests for every city department. However, decision makers must grasp the implications of this approach before diving in head-first. Only then can government proceed to responsibly implement 311 in a way that leverages existing technology and invests in organizational and practice improvement. By adopting best practices, standardizing operations and technology across departmental boundaries, and implementing the best available technology, the city can respond quickly to citizen requests, communicate better internally and externally, and reduce costs.

It’s About Planning, Not a Panacea

In a recent article on the impact of one-call service delivery, TIME magazine called 311”urban reform at its most elegant.” The article described 311 as a low-cost means of bolstering internal cooperation, identifying patterns that can be used to anticipate citizen needs, and democratizing the delivery of services. The significance of this model hits home on several levels.

Mayor Eddie Perez of Hartford, CT, is leading that city’s revitalization with programs like 311 one-call service delivery. Hartford has retained EMA to design and implement its 311 effort.

When customer service improves, citizen perceptions of the city do likewise. Once a ‘service-first’ culture takes root and civic employees receive training, tools, and opportunities, their job satisfaction rises. Managers acquire performance measurement opportunities that enable legitimate continuous improvement and proactive maintenance while reducing the cost of doing business.

Hartford, CT, Mayor Eddie Perez is typical of an energetic new wave of civic politicians who understand that cities must get better at serving citizens if they are to thrive long-term. Perez has backed up his pledge to improve public service by leading efforts to implement 311 in Hartford. EMA has been retained to lead the effort.

It’s all about planning, not a panacea. Only by taking time up front – to analyze the requirements and recognize the organizational realities involved – can decision-makers expect real change. Otherwise, the temptation will be great to invest in new technology that – by itself – won’t get the job done.

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