Inter Access does not just act as a supplier, but also helps us in our thoughts about improvement of services.
In less than two years’ time, the municipality of Leiden has taken enormous steps regarding internal and external services. A new, centralised and ultramodern ICT infrastructure plays a crucial role in this, as well as the new digital counter. The municipality of Leiden achieved this success partly due to a partnership with Inter Access, who provides the infrastructure and the related services. “We are approaching the leaders in this area, whereby we can provide better quality to citizens at the same costs”, says Dick van Wielink, director of the Information & Services division.
In 2003, the municipality of Leiden made the choice to leave a decentralised organisational structure. After all, this lead to vertical services and inefficient deployment of company resources. This structure also limited the municipality in fulfilling activities in the field of ‘Different Government’, the state programme for service improvement to citizens by reducing bureaucracy and increasing the effectiveness of government bodies. “The municipality decided to centralise the important parts of all internal and external services into one new division: Information and Services”, says Van Wielink. “This division is responsible for the support of the internal municipal organisation, including ICT and facility management. We also provide a wide range of services to citizens, such as civil services, taxes, communication and archive.”
In order to improve these services, the municipality decided to centralise all ICT activities to start with. “Previously, ICT was also completely decentralised. This lead to an obscure infrastructure which was really not properly manageable and controllable anymore,” says Van Wielink. The new centralised department brought order in all existing components and decided to completely replace the existing ICT infrastructure in 2005. The municipality then enlisted Inter Access to supply and set up the new infrastructure. The objective was to create a new environment, against minimal disinvestments, that would be sufficiently flexible and adjustable to support the municipality of Leiden effectively in its ambitions regarding services in years to come.
The new infrastructure is currently in use and offers important benefits as well, according to Hans Nelissen, Service Manager ICT at the municipality. “Due to its setup, the new infrastructure enables us to charge the costs of all ICT use, varying from software licences to disk capacity, to the departments in a better way. Previously, departments had to contribute to the costs of ICT as well, but it was not easy to provide insight into the costs per department. Now this is the case: the user pays, which means that each department can actually manage based on ICT costs. Departments can make motivated decisions whether, for example, they want to purchase extra licences for a certain application or choose a different solution.”
The new infrastructure also formed the basis for developing electronic services to the residents of Leiden. “That is why we set up a very intensive selection procedure”, says Van Wielink. “We wanted a digital counter, which was more than a pretty shop window. Technically, it had to cooperate with the back-office as much as possible. This has been realised. A strict demand was that the implementation of a digital counter would not lead to all sorts of extra activities. We have spoken with various suppliers and invited a few of them to present a proof-of-concept. Inter Access was most convincing with their WEB+.”
The municipality of Leiden chose to start with a limited number of products that would be offered to citizens via the digital counter: different kinds of extracts, relocations within the municipality, consulting the WOZ value (municipal property tax) of a house, objecting to the WOZ value and requesting municipal subsidies. “We have chosen those products in particular, because for us they represent high volumes”, says Van Wielink. “Offering these products via the digital counter provides us with the best benefits in terms of efficiency.” Van Wielink notes, however, that Leiden has not seen a noticeable reduction in the number of physical customer contacts since the digital counter is operational. Nationwide, the same trend is visible. “Offering these services creates new demands, of course. What we do notice clearly, is that people who come to the city hall are much better prepared thanks to the information we provide via the website of the municipality of Leiden. That is a benefit as well.” This way, Leiden can also meet the demands of the State that by the end of 2007, every municipality must offer 65% of its services digitally. Partly due to the start of the digital counter, Leiden rose to the twelfth place in the municipal ranking list (advies.overheid.nl).
For the technical support of the infrastructure – network and servers – the municipality of Leiden renewed the existing contracts with Inter Access for another three years. Inter Access has been responsible for this activity for four years now, and provides on-site support on top of that. Both parties are currently using a growing model as their starting point, in which further improvement of the quality of processes is key. “At ICT level, so much is happening for municipalities at the moment that we cannot do without a partner,” says Dick van Wielink. “Inter Access does not just act as a supplier, but also helps us in our thoughts about improvement of services.”