Photo by Analyn Cuarto
City focuses on streamlining processes
By Colten Kamlade, Staff Reporter
The City of Coquitlam has been making an effort to become more efficient by streamlining and improving many of their services and processes.
According to the 2017 Final Progress Report and 2018 Work Plan from the Staff Committee on Business Improvements and Customer Service, the initiative began in 2010, when the Staff Committee on Business Improvements and Customer Service was created to better devise user-friendly practices.
“The Committee’s objective is to formalize the work that many departments do to improve the delivery of their programs and services and to establish a City-wide approach to finding efficiencies and improving customer service,” the report states.
S0 far, the committee has completed 298 of their goals. Though none of these accomplishments affect students directly, Graham Stuart, corporate planning manager for the City of Coquitlam, said in an email interview with the Other Press that students will certainly benefit from the committee’s efforts.
“In terms of the impact on students, these initiatives look to improve service to our clients as well as our internal services,” he said. “They affect students in that students invariably use our services. For example, if they register for recreation programs.”
Registration is being worked on alongside improvements to technology. Stuart described how these components are being worked on together.
“Part of the mandate of the program is to review current practices regarding technology,” he said. “Through this process, our team in Parks, Recreation, and Culture looked at ways to improve our online registration system and the team in Finance worked to facilitate better use of payment options at our various service windows at City Hall.”
The committee is not just focussed on efficiency, however. The 2017 Final Progress Report and 2018 Work Plan from the Staff Committee on Business Improvements and Customer Service also made environmentally conscious recommendations. The Stop-Doing List includes some of these ecologically-minded suggestions, such as reducing waste by eliminating single-use disposable vinyl pull-up banners, stopping the distribution of individual job posters to facilities, and replacing 1,200 pages of printed payroll reports with exception reporting and Excel training.
