Reykjavík — City of Services
Reykjavík is a city of services. Our goal is to provide all-around excellent service. We are dedicated to addressing any issues that may arise with residents or staff quickly and safely, and making information about city services easily accessible.
What is a service?
It could be argued that all the Department's projects revolve around service in one way or another. Service here refers to interactions with parties who seek and receive services from Reykjavík City, both its residents and visitors. This also applies to all internal cooperation among Reykjavík City's staff, as the city's employees often serve other staff members.
The Services & Transformation Office, formerly the Service Design Office, manages the City's frontline services as well as tasks related to service transformation. There is a strong emphasis that not all service is digital, though that is always the first choice when it comes to transformation.
Strong, coordinated frontline service
There are many angles to consider when it comes to the daily tasks of the City's frontline service. This is the team that keeps things running and provides direct service to residents and staff all day long.
The City's service center is often the first point of contact for residents with the City. Here we answer the questions of residents, visitors, and City staff and resolve all kinds of issues. The Operations Service ensures that everything is top-notch in the City's administrative buildings, both in terms of general operations and security issues.
Service transformation
Service transformation is a crucial element in improving Reykjavík residents' experience with the public system. The aim is to bring the service closer to the resident by offering digital service as needed, accessible design, and a human interface instead of applications on paper forms and outdated regulatory frameworks. The work is based on the goals of the City's Service Policy and is part of the implementation of the Green Deal.
The main role of service transformation is to identify, design, produce, and oversee the development and implementation of improved service. The Department includes people with diverse backgrounds and extensive experience in developing digital products; producers, service designers, digital product designers, user researchers, change managers, and other specialists as needed for each project.
Discussions in the hot pot
Búi Bjartmar Aðalsteinsson, a service designer, reviews methods in interviews and analysis work related to Ylströndin hot water beach, as well as broaching several products of the work.
In addition, the importance of dialogue with users and service recipients is speculated upon.
Service request system
There has long been a call for the introduction of a single system that keeps track of all Reykjavík City's service delivery. This would provide a better overview, improve maintenance, and give access to statistics on various service levels.
Today, Reykjavík City uses different systems to keep track of service delivery, so we have sought solutions that could better meet the City's needs.
It is therefore a great joy that the first step has now been taken in testing a service request system with a service portal as a web interface on top of the system.
Service portal
Through Reykjavík's service portal, staff can access various forms of assistance such as IT support, web services, and operational services.
In the near future, the Portal can be expanded to provide more services for staff, elected officials, and residents.
This will include a self-service digital approval process for equipment requests, significantly saving time for managers and staff.
Review of the Service Policy
Our service is guided by the City's Service Policy, a significant milestone in Reykjavík City's service delivery. Its implementation is a long-term project that is largely about a change in mentality and requires consensus and commitment on the part of all Reykjavík staff.
As of 2021, the Policy had been in force for five years. We therefore decided to review it, make it even more targeted, and to update it in line with the current era. The revised Policy, along with the Action Plan, was approved by the City Council in the spring of 2022.
The new and more ambitious action plan sets out measures that further support the implementation of the Policy. The tasks ahead are therefore numerous and exciting, addressing, among other things, the increased emphasis on education, the promotion of services, and user-centered design, the development and implementation of service standards, the creation of a tool kit for user-centered services, the measurement of service quality, and the mapping of service processes.
Campaign for scanning blueprints
Many of the architectural drawings at the Building Commissioner have not yet been converted to digital format. We're talking about over a million blueprints, meaning access to them is only on paper and thus limited and inaccessible. The goal is to digitize all these blueprints and make them available online. A tender is planned and the appropriate process has begun.
The Service Center receives about 6,357 requests for blueprints per year. If we assume it takes about 12 minutes on average to process one request, we can estimate that the staff spend around 76,284 minutes processing blueprints per year, equivalent to 35 full working weeks. With digital access to blueprints, we can reduce the number of requests by >95% and allocate staff time to other tasks.
Suggestion Portal
The Suggestion Portal is an online portal for residents to bring various suggestions to the City's attention. The website is located at the Service Center where service representatives respond to suggestions and either solve issues or refer them to the appropriate parties.
Since the Portal's launch at the end of 2018, nearly 30 thousand suggestions have been received, and most of them are related to the services of the Department of Environment & Planning. On average, about 6,500 suggestions are received per year, but 2022 is looking to be a record year in the number of suggestions. March 1, 2022, was the Portal's busiest day since its inception, with 712 suggestions received on the same day.
The Suggestion Portal facilitates the Service Center to handle many inquiries at once during high-traffic times, and provide people with convenient and accessible service. It also plays a key role in implementing the City's service policy. The Portal creates closer ties with residents and is a good way to train the entire City administration to provide good service – not just on the front lines, but all the way to the departments themselves.