Groningen
Groningen wants opinion of citizens on its e-Services
The Groningen Municipality is teaming up with the University of Groningen to determine if its e-services satisfy citizens’ service expectations. After the online surveys of the City of Kortrijk, a survey on services by Memori in five municipalities in the Kortrijk region and the surveys in Osterholz-Scharmbeck, this is again a Smart Cities initiative on participation, measuring and co-design.
Groningen monitors mobile use of municipal website
Mobile use of the internet is on the rise. Groningen now has the ability to monitor its website on the use of mobile devices. Since the start of this analysis-tool (part of Google analytics) on Nov 3rd 2009, the Groningen website was visited by more than 5500 mobile visitors. Daily, between 20 and 70 mobile users visit our website.
Groningen receives Certificate for Good Services
![image_preview[1]](http://smartcities.info/files/images/image_preview[1].thumbnail.jpg "image_preview[1]")
On Monday 1 March 2010 the alderman for Economic Affairs Jaap Dijkstra received the ‘Certificate for Good Services’ at the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the Hague. This Certificate summarizes the results and main areas for improvement of a municipality’s services for businesses.
Groningen
Groningen is the largest city in the Northern Netherlands, with a population of 187,000, and is the eighth largest city in the Netherlands. Groningen has a university, a university of applied sciences, a school for fine art and design, an academy of music and many more training institutes. It is a young city – half of the population is under 35 years of age.
Smart Cities Pilot - Optimisation of the e-mail channel in the City of Groningen
The municipality recognises that there are considerable problems in how it currently handles email, and the pilot sets out an approach to develop a management system to rectify this by setting up proper systems and structures.
The municipality recognises that there are considerable problems in how it currently handles email, and the pilot sets out an approach to develop a management system to rectify this by setting up proper systems and structures.
Objectives
- Enhances customer satisfaction.
- Better e-mail handling within the organisation.
- Better quality answers for citizens.
- More structured e-mail entrances and communication-policy on (the use of) e-mail.
- The use of web forms on the internet channel instead of web-addresses.
Approach
- Analyse scope and determine approach.
- Determining the first steps to take
- make an e-mail protocol, and determine which are the central e-mail addresses within the Groningen municipality
- remove unnecessary e-mail addresses from the website and replace them by webforms
- make a communication-plan
Context: improving this specific channel of customer services (in line with the vision on services ‘’visie publieke dienstverlening 2014”).
Why: mails aren’t being registered, management information is lacking, we don’t know if mails are being answered properly, and if they are, we don’t know if they are answered in time, with the right quality of answer. In short we don’t have any KPIs. The ombudsman stated in her yearly report that citizens don’t get any proper answers when they address the municipality by mail. We have at least 5000 e-mail addresses within our own administration (3000 employees) and have almost 80 different mail-addresses published on our website.
Issues:
- preparing the necessary technical adjustments (ICT)
- making an inventory of the existing problems (amount of mails, amount of entrees, are they being registered etc., who’s responsible for issuing e-mail addresses , who controls them, autographing of mails, quality of the mails in terms of transparency and comprehensibility, the use of out of office reply’s)
- Making an action plan to address some issues which need action first.
The policy of the municipality is to increase the use of public transportation and upgrade customer experience.
Customer benefits:
- better quality emails (content)
- faster and better answers
- status information (e.g. when it takes longer to respond)
- receiving auto-replies
Performance benefits:
- possibly a benchmark will be held
- process descriptions will be made (2010)
Employee benefits:
- clear rules about how to handle mail
- clear process descriptions
- more responsibility
Financial benefits:
- The more our mail handling is being structured, the less time it will consume
Project benefits:
- Process-thinking. Multi channel approach (giving the same answers for every channel).
Smart Cities Pilot - Public transport planner - Groningen
The pilot will develop a mobile phone application that will provide real-time information on public transportation e.g. bus schedules, movements etc.. It will develop an API for this approach which will be shared amongst partners.
The pilot will develop a mobile phone application that will provide real-time information on public transportation e.g. bus schedules, movements etc.. It will develop an API for this approach which will be shared amongst partners.
Approach:
- Research on the interface and GPS systems on the local buses
- Research on existing public transport planners and their interfaces
- Choosing an open planning system suitable for this pilot
- Setting up a data set and writing necessary interface
- Testing, implementation and documentation
- Marketing research
- During these steps a continuous sharing with and feedback from the partners involved.
Deliverables
- application usable on portable devices such as internet-enabled phones and PDA’s
- API or other interface for partners or other cities
- Marketing plan (based on research)
Several WP 4 partners have expressed an interest in developing a public transport planner, usable on portable devices, with real-time information on the location of buses. In the Netherlands a good planner is already available, but without real-time information.
In Groningen the buses are equipped with GPS systems and a wireless infrastructure is already available, so implementation of this system appears to be ‘a piece of cake’. The system will be set up so that other partners can re-use it with their specific public transport data.
The policy of the municipality is to increase the use of public transportation and upgrade customer experience.
Customer benefits:
- Higher uptake of use of public transportation
- Higher customer satisfaction.
Performance benefits:
- Not applicable.
Employee benefits:
- Not applicable
Financial benefits:
- Secondary benefits of higher uptake of public transportation.
Smart Cities create wireless services
The Smart Cities partners will create six pilots on mobile services in 2010. This is the result of a workshop on wireless services in Groningen. The partners will work on tourism, parking and library services, and will exchange methodologies to build mobile services. Check also the video.
Groningen municipal Wi-Fi network goes live
The Mayor of Groningen, mr. Peter Rehwinkel, officially inaugurated the Groningen Unwired Network at the NITE (Northern IT Event). The first phase of the network, in the city center and in the Zernike campus has been rolled out. Though the network is only in the first phase, the Zernike Campus is already the largest wifi employment in the Netherlands.
Wireless networks provide chances for innovative services
A wireless network can provide a whole new generation of location based and mobile services. This is one of the conclusions of the E-Gov Acadamy on wireless services, hosted by the Municipality of Groningen and Draadloos Groningen.
Wireless Groningen signs contract with Unwired Holding
Groningen, Netherlands has hired Unwired Holding CV to deploy and manage a citywide wireless broadband network. The city center expects to be unwired by October 2009, with the entire city completed by 2010.
