Could contact centers be a solution in local management administration?

Corneanu Valentin

Abstract:

The administration is struggling to be more affective in communicating information

toward citizens and in receiving feedback from them. E-government policies are helping with
a new approach on the mater, a technological based approach. The use of ICT is essential for
this organizational transformation. In a virtual organization, ICT mediates the communication
among different units at different geographical locations (Bernhard and Grundn). In his
article, Managing Boundaries in American Administration, Donald F . Kettl concludes that: no
bureaucracy, however conceived or designed, can encompass any problem that matters, and
that solving 21st-century problems demands new, cross-boundary strategies for
communication. The contact center system inspired from call center practice might be a
solution in over passing todays more complex and interrelated problems in local
administration. CCs were assimilates as being an efficient process in the private sector. This
paper will try to answer the question of the possibility of implementing CCs in Regional
Directorate General of Public Finance of Bucharest.

Key words:

Public management, New public management, Call Centre, Contact Center,

eGovernment, eGovernanace

Contact center

Contact center is according to Andersson Bck (2008) "a 'new' type of organizational
form, where the organization of actions and the use of technological tools are underpinned
by the logics of cost-effectiveness and customer-focus". The use of ICT is essential for this
organizational transformation. In a virtual organization ICT mediates the communication
among different units at different geographical locations (Bernhard and Grundn2013). New
electronic sources of information could also be the use of real-time information from sensors
in the infrastructure such as roads and electricity networks, which can be compiled and used
as sources for quick decision-making, contributing to solve infrastructure problems as soon
as possible (Bernhard and Grundn2013).

The CC is a front office for citizens and businesses, and the main communication
mode is by phone. But the CC also requires developed work processes for the back office in
order to contribute to increased quality and efficiency for the organization.( Bernhard and
Grundn2013).

Implementation of local e-government such as CCs is characterized by huge and

complex change processes that require new competencies both for employees and
management in the municipal organization, as well as for citizens and businesses. The
extended use of ICT support for municipal service production and re-organization efforts
could contribute to more efficient procedures, but will also put demands on continuous
learning processes in order to meet the new requirements (Bernhard and Grundn2013).
From the Sweden case, Bernhard and Grundn (2013) concluded that it is need for internal
training, education and continuous updating of skills as the context of the municipalities is
continuously changing. There for we are signaled that a good private sector idea could be
hard to manage, difficult to implement and often fails because private sector ideas cannot be
transplanted into the public sector (Heeks, 2006).

The concept and meaning of a CC derives from the concept of a commercial call
centre, which have been increasingly used in the private sector since the beginning of the
twenty-first century (Norman, 2005). The development of call centers in the public sector is
especially influenced by aspects such as increased service and availability from a citizen
perspective as well as internal efficiency.

Call center

Call center according to Cambridge dictionary is a large office in which a company's

employees provideinformation to its customers, or sell or advertise its goods or services, by
phone. By a business point of view it is defined, by the same Cambridge dictionary, as
being: an office or business in which employees provide phone support for the customers of
one or more companies, or sell or advertise their goods or services by phone.

Telephone call centers are technology-intensive operations. They can offer customer
service, emergency response service, help desk, telemarketing etc. They could be large or
small centers, national or international centers. Often 70% or more of their operating costs
are devoted to human resources. Well-run call centers adhere to a sharply defined balance
between agent efficiency and service quality (Gans, Koole, Mandelbaum, 2003). The quality
and operational efficiency of these telephone services can be extraordinary. In a large,
bestpractice call center, many hundreds of agents can cater to many thousands of phone
callers per hour.For many companies, such as airlines, hotels, retail banks, and credit card
companies, call centers provide a primary link between customer and service provider(Gans,
Koole and Mandelbaum 2013).
A current trend is the extension of the call center into a contact center. The trend
toward contact centers has been stimulated by societal hype surrounding the Internet and by
customer demand for channel variety, as well as by the potential for efficiency gains. In
particular, requests for e-mail and fax services can be stored for later response, and it is
possible that, when standardized and well managed, they can be made significantly less
costly than telephone services (Gans, Koole, Mandelbaum 2003).

Call centers hope to reduce costs by automating the first level of screening. Software
to test human language skills now exists. Te basic language skills needed by an agent
include fluency, good vocabulary, good grammar, proper pronunciation and good
comprehension. An interviewer marks each candidate based on these skills. Today, speech
recognition and natural language processing technologies are maturing, and can be used to
evaluate candidates on each of these parameters. Natural language processing systems are
capable of going through a large collection of calls and analyzing the reasons for success and
failure. Call centers are adopting natural language systems a lot more to analyze
conversations, and to identify good and positive practices. The private information you
provided is getting stored, and call centers will soon install software that will automatically
scan the calls and mask out mentions of sensitive information like credit card details, dates
of birth, addresses, etc. Today, speech recognition and entity recognition systems are
advanced enough to do this with a reasonable accuracy (Subramaniam 2008).
 The performance gap, between call centers and CCs, is also likely due to the growing
complexity of contact centers. Recent trends in networking, skills-based routing, and
multimedia have fundamentally increased the challenges inherent in managing contact
centers. While simple analytical models have historically performed an important role in the
management of call centers, they leave much to be desired. Approaches that are more
sophisticated are needed to accurately describe the reality of contact-center operations, and
models of this reality can improve contact-center performance significantly (Gans, Koole,
Mandelbaum 2003).
Telephony dominates channel usage in some situations: Accenture (2005) reports
63% of industrialized country respondents contacting government by telephone; compared
to 31% using the Internet over a 12-month period (Heeks 2006).

New public management

In Western democracies, governments, since the early 1980s, were challenged by

New Public Management (NPM), which offers more one-dimensional solutions to complex
structures and problems (Christensen, Lie and Lgreid 2007). Most NPM reform efforts have
had similar goals: to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the public sector, enhance
the responsiveness of public agencies to their clients and customers, reduce public
expenditure and improve managerial accountability (Wright 1994).
When New Public Management was introduced in the early 1980s in Australia and
New Zealand it was intended as an alternative to and confrontation with old public
administration, which was seen as representing a centralized, integrated and big
government model (Gregory 2001; Halligan 2001).
The main message from the NPM entrepreneurs, often with clear ideological and
symbolic overtones, was that governments and public sectors around the world not only had
to be scaled back, but also fundamentally restructured, often based on a combination of
market- and management theories. NPM reform ideas amounted to a rather fragmented
model that swung the balance in favor of autonomy and created a good deal more
complexity. It is well documented that NPM has been a rather complex and mixed bag of
reforms. (Christensen & Lgreid 2010). The NPM reforms combined vertical specialization or
structural devolution with extensive use of the principle of single-purpose organizations or
horizontal specialization, creating a fragmented system which, it was argued, catered to role
purity (Gregory 2001).

The biggest flaws of NPM were probably its efforts to divorce management from policy
(Kettl 2006). The NPM reform wave, seen as a reaction to the challenges and problems of
the old public administration, and the post-NPM reform wave, seen partly as a reaction to
the negative effects of NPM, are together resulting in a complex sedimentation or layering of
structural and cultural features (Olsen 2009; Streeck and Thelen 2005).

The new reforms complement or supplement old reforms rather than replacing them.
Old and new institutions co-exist and co-evolve even if they are founded on partly
inconsistent principles. This means that NPM reforms are being modified and adjusted by
post-NPM reforms (Christensen & Lgreid 2010).
For the last century, in fact, public administration has had boundaries on the brain.
(Kettl 2006)

eGovernment
 eGovernment can be defined as the use of information and communication
technologies by public sector Heeks(2006). The use of the information could be extended if
new categories are used when the data is registered, for example. To use, develop and
integrate business intelligence IT-based tools includes components that support follow-up on
different levels of an organization (Borking 2011). Poor decision-making is usually related to
not knowing how to use available information or whether the information is sufficient
(Borking 2011).
The total number of citizens ever making use of e-government worldwide is relatively
small. By far the main use of e-services by citizens is to access information from government
Web sites rather than actual services (Heeks2006). The challenge to build a virtual state or a
fully developed e-government is not about technological capability but about overcoming
entrenched organizational, social, and political institutions. The implication to public
administration is clear: Technology, institution, and organization must coevolve; as a result,
e-government is not simply introducing web-based technology (Fountain, Yang 2003). To turn
that e-government-based data into an impact requires that the data be assessed, applied
and then acted upon. This requires money, skills, knowledge, motivation, confidence,
empowerment and trust among other resources (Heeks2006).

Cities are yet to recognize the importance of involving and supporting citizen
participation online. A promising finding in terms of citizen participation however is the
growing tendency among municipalities to publish performance measurement data on their
websites. That comprehensive policy should include capacity building for municipalities,
including information infrastructure, content, applications and access for individuals and
educating the residents with appropriate computer education (Holzer, Kim2007).
There are five levels of eGovernment: local, state/provincial, regional, national and
international (Heeks2006). The readiness for e-government implementation state respects
seven core elements and they are as it follows: Data systems infrastructure; Legal
infrastructure; Institutional infrastructure; Human infrastructure; Technological infrastructure;
Leadership and strategic thinking; eGovernment drivers (Heeks2006)
Barriers that can block or constrain eGovernment progress are: leadership failures;
financial inhibitors; digital divides and choices, poor coordination, workplace and
organizational inflexibility, lack of trust, poor technical design (Catalin Vrabie2013).
eGovernanace facilitates interaction between different actors. These interactions are
according to stakeholders involved as Government-to-Government, Government-to-Citizen,
Government-to-Business and Government-to-Employees, Government-to-Non-Profits. The
benefits of eGovernace should be: better access to information and quality services for
citizens; simplicity, efficiency and accountability in the government; expanded reach of
governance.

There are nine factors for characterizing the attitude towards on line public service
delivery three of which were relative benefits (less time, cost and avoiding interaction) and
six of which were barriers to adoption (experience, information quality, financial security, low
stress, trust and visual appeal), (Gilbert and Balestrini2004).

From the citizens perspective from the bottom up government is about quality
of life. Citizens want their air to be clean, their water drinkable, their streets safe, their
illnesses cured, and their children taught well, among many other things. They pay little
attention to which agency manages which program in solving these problems; they just want
them solved. Throughout the last half of the 20th century, however, hierarchy has been less
and less a satisfactory solution. Devising new strategies to bring public administration in
sync with the multiorganizational, multisector operating realities of todays government
requires a collaborative, network-based approach (Kettl 2006). The largest means are those
relating to safety, confidentiality and reliability (Gilbert and Balestrini2004).
 Regional Directorate General of Public Finance of Bucharest

Bucharest Administrative organization (the information that fallows was selected

from The report on 2013 performance of the Regional Directorate General of Public Finance
of Bucharest)

Bucharest city is divided into six administrative districts, each led by a mayor. The
City hall is responsible for utilities (water, transport, main boulevards). District mayors have
as responsibilities the contact between citizens and local councils, secondary streets, parks,
schools and sanitation.

The legislative framework under which the Regional Directorate General of Public Finance of
Bucharest exercise attributions was adopted in 2013 by reorganization. The Regional
Directorate General of Public Finance of Bucharest is organized by collection, tax audit, legal,
internal services, treasury and customs activities. The total number of employs, on
December 31, 2013, in the Regional Directorate General of Public Finance of Bucharest was
2,378 people.

National Agency for Fiscal Administration manages a total number of 1.229.310 taxpayers
from witch 907.171 individuals and 322.139 legal entities.

Taxpayer service and assistance activities

The activity of taxpayer service department had as results a number of 4758

addresses solved from witch 2754 answers send by e-mail, 150 answers in meetings with
taxpayers, 28 press releases and 100 informative materials distributed /edited.

In 2013, were recorded in the Office of Press and Public Relations a total of 21 public
information requests made under 544/2001 law, low that guarantees the free access to
public information.

IS THE TAXPAYER SERVICE AND ASSISTANCE WORKING PROPERLY?

WHAT IS THE PUBLIC PERSEPTION OF Regional Directorate General of Public Finance

of Bucharest?
WHAT BENEFITS COULD CCs IMPLEMENTATION BRING?
THERE ARE SUCCES MODELS PROVIDED BY IMPLEMENTING THE CCs CONCEPT?

Andersson Bck, M. (2008). Conceptions, conflicts and contradictions at the introduction of a

Swedish Health Call Centre. Doctoral thesis, Gothenburg University.

Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary- Cambridge University Press, 2008

Noah Gans, Ger Koole, Avishai Mandelbaum, (2003) Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review,
and Research Prospects. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

Norman, K. (2005) - Call center work characteristics, physical and psychosocial exposure
and related outcomes. Doctoral thesis. Linkping: Linkping University, Division for industrial
ergonomics.

Irene Bernhard and Kerstin Grundn 2013 Challenging Organizational Issues When Municipal
Contact Centers are Implemented in Sweden Electronic Journal of e-Government Volume 11
Issue 2 2013

Irene Cecilia Bernhard2014 -Local e-Government in Sweden - Municipal Contact Centre

Implementation with Focus on Public Administrators and Citizens

L Venkata Subramaniam - Call cetres of the future 2008

Tom Christensen, Amund Lie and Per Lgreid 2007- Transcending New Public
Management;The Transformation of Public Sector Reforms

Kaifeng Yang(2003) - Beyond Jane Fountain - Neoinstitutionalism and E-Government

Lucica Matei (2006)- Management public

Tom Christensen & Per Lgreid (2010) - Complexity and Hybrid Public Administration
Theoretical and Empirical Challenges

Marc Holzer Seang-Tae Kim(2007) - Digital Governance in Municipalities Worldwide

Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen 2005 Introductio: institutional chanhe in advanced
political economies

Donald F . Kettl 2006- Managing Boundaries in American Administration: Th e Collaboration

Imperative

Richard Heeks(2006) -Understanding and Measuring eGovernment: International

Benchmarking Studies

Borking, K. , Danielson, M. , Davies, G. , Ekenberg, L. , Idefeldt, J. & Larsson, A. (2011)

Transcending Business Intelligence, Stockholm: Sine Metu.

Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen(2005)-Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in

Advanced Political Economies

E-GOVERNMENT CHALLENGES IN ROMANIA CATALIN VRABIE(2013)

David Gilbert and Pierre Balestrini (2004)-Barriers and Benefits in the Adoption of E-
Government

The report on 2013s performance of the Regional Directorate General of Public Finance of
Bucharest

Olsen, J. P. (2009). Change and continuity: an institutional approach to institutions of

democratic government