The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
On-line citizen request program first in state
New service more efficient and dependable
By Kym Boelter-Muckler, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: July 7, 2005
Milan city residents will soon see a major improvement in customer service when it comes to dealing with city hall.
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This week the city will go on-line with a new Internet based program that will allow residents and non-residents to file requests on-line.
"This is a very big deal," said Milan City Administrator Mike Czymbor. "No other city in Michigan has done this. We are the first one."
Large entities like city governments and industries can be hard to communicate with for the average consumer—the new program was designed specifically to improve communication between the two.
The program, called Request Partner, went live this past Tuesday and is now accessible through the City of Milan Web site.
"We are excited about this," said Milan information systems director Chris Slay. "It is going to solve a lot of recurring problems."
Some of those issues are related to losing resident requests and phone messages.
The previous resident request system was long considered imperfect at best, flawed at worst, according to some of the complaints voiced by city residents.
But the new on-line system allows residents 24-hour access to the city of Milan.
"Every department has on-line forms that can be filled out. They are electronically sent to the correct department or person and time stamped. Each resident request can now be tracked to see if it has been addressed," Slay said. "This will streamline customer service and give us a means of tracking each resident request. The program ensures each request goes to the right person or department. This is going to be great for the residents."
Slay gave a demonstration on how the program would work to members of the city council at the Monday meeting.
Slay explained that many times in the past, a resident would see a city employee or DPW worker out on the street and give a verbal complaint or request.
"But doing it that way, complaints and requests are very hard to track," Slay explained. "Many times the resident will end up having to call us and retell the problem several times to different departments before the problem gets to the right place and that takes time; and can get frustrating for the resident."
THE DPW RUNS on work orders, so when residents place on-line complaints or requests, they will be expedited to the right person and a work order will automatically be generated so the problem can be addressed efficiently, Slay said.
There is no requirement that city residents be computer savvy or even own a computer in order to benefit from the on-line service.
"Now when a resident calls us—whoever answers the phone can go on-line and fill out the on-line request for them and it will be dealt with by whoever is supposed to deal with it," Slay said.
Slay intends to put a computer kiosk for residents within city hall, and if they have questions on how to use the program they will have support staff there to help them, he said.
"Residents do not have to sign up for anything and they don't even have to use it if they don't want to—-the beauty of it is everyone is going to benefit from this because resident requests will be expedited in a way that ensures their problem is dealt with," Slay said.
Residents need to take care that they do not try to use the program for emergencies.
"If you have an emergency situation do not try to use the on-line service to deal with it—-call 911 or the Milan Police," Slay advised.
The city spent upwards of $5,000 for the Request Partner program and will pay upwards of $1,200 annually for the service, based out of Minnesota.
"That's another great thing about the program, it will run without draining our own server. Everything is archived by them," Slay said.
For the past few weeks the staff at city hall has been keeping track of the most frequently asked questions they answer on a daily basis, so the new program will also have an FAQ page to help keep residents informed.
The new on-line request system is accessible by visiting:http://www.ci.milan.mi.us.
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