United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

Senior citizens in the city of Stockholm need to get in contact with city officials/administrators to get information on for ex how to receive services for elderly, how to move into a home for elderly, how to choose between different homes. We have a limited number of employees that can assist them, which caused problems for the senior citizens to get in contact with our administrators. We got criticized for being hard to reach; that our senior citizens had to wait in line on the phone was sent back and forth between different administrators without getting the right information.
Our administrators of elderly care had only certain hours per day that you could call to talk to someone. There was always a queue and more than 60 % never came through to talk to someone. It was of course extremely frustrating for our senior citizens and their families. But it was also frustrating for our employees, who felt that they never managed to fulfill people’s expectations.
We have introduced the ability to choose in a voucher system for our senior citizens with special needs. We support this on our website with a tool for comparison between all the various opportunities, but some need to talk to a living person. Since we have introduced both a voucher system for freedom of choice between different alternatives and the opportunity to make comparison between the alternatives more senior citizens than before needed someone to talk to initially.
The situation was unacceptable in the long run. The city provides – or finances – services to our citizens. It is our duty to be reachable for our citizens and reachable much faster than before. Our citizens must be able to get assistance both on our website and through telephone, and on the phone from a person who has competence and time to answer your questions right away.
To solve our problems and substantially improve our services to our senior citizens we introduced “Äldre direkt”(”Elderly direct”) which is a new telephone number that you can call regardless of in which city district you live in and you will get to talk to someone immediately that knows all about care for the elderly.
In this “Elderly direct” all the employees can look into all the city’s IT systems concerning service delivery in all its forms, they can look into the calling persons personal files, but only down to a “need to know-basis”. Everything is built to serve and help elderly people to get information at once, in a correct way, by professionals. No decision making is involved, that is still left to those who have the responsibility to pay for what the old person needs after there has been a thorough investigation concerning the needs. To be able to do this you must meet the person that it relates to. When we hired staff to Elderly direct, we hired skilled employees with a great deal of experience, specialists.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
It’s only one number you need to know if you seek information about elderly care, despite where in the city you live, the normal way to go about getting services and information is to call the city-district in which you live. In order to do so you must know which district this is. Then you will have to get lucky and get through when they have telephone hours. 68 % now get response directly within one minute and 86 % within three minutes and don’t need to talk to anybody else. The number of telephone calls has increased, since it’s worthwhile calling now, and the latest four months there has been 63 646 calls to Elderly direct. Of all the questions and requests more than 74 % have been met by the Elderly direct in this only contact. You don’t have to know in which city district you live in, the person you reach at Elderly direct finds that out in our systems. We have given everyone who needs information about care for the elderly a special number, which you can call all day long where you immediately get to talk to someone who knows all about the subject and also can. We set the goals high as to level of calls getting answered within one and three minutes and the amount of questions that were to be solved in this contact, even though there is no decision making in “Elderly direct”. So far we have almost met our standards even though we have built up the system and worked it in relation to the customers at the same time. There has already been measures concerning the quality that the customers have experienced and the results are very good. Another purpose was to free time for the category of employees that are the actual decision makers to make it possible for them to visit the elderly people who are in need of service. We see tendencies that this is now being met.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
There were a handful of city-district executives in the city of Stockholm who had heard of 311 in NY. In 2005 we therefore started two small “experiments” in two city-districts where a minor version of 311 was established. We also got at steering group of four that followed the experiment in order to evaluate and, if this was to be g success, try to find a way to make this a model for the whole of the city of Stockholm’s official services. We got a consultant to help us think about the IT and we made some real “cero point measurements”, which we then used to build our expectations and efforts around. The experiments were very well received by the inhabitants of these two districts. In the winter of 2006 we got a decision from the city council about setting up a project with the aim of starting a smaller kind of 311 in some areas of the city’s missions concerning the citizens and the business sector. In charge of the project was Ms Carina Lundberg Uudelepp, deputy CEO of the City. A project manager was selected as well. She was one of the former two managers of the local “experiments” we had had. In the project we also engaged a consultant. In the whole process there was a new steering group involved, which had continuously meetings with all involved in different operations managed by the city. This project- Contact Center Stockholm - is and was bigger than “Elderly direct” and is therefore not yet completed, it has been decided that it shall grow every year with new services reachable through Contact center. We soon, however, discovered that since we were giving the elderly people new possibilities to choose that they had not yet experienced, we needed to cut out the efforts in this bigger project that directly concerned the elderly in order to make the other news more accessible. We made special line within the project to create “Elderly direct”. We had meetings with the organizations that consist of senior citizens, with experts in this area and with the employees. Then we appointed a manager and decided on where in our organization this new “Elderly direct” was to be placed. It was eventually all decided by city council. Our department of services is responsible for Both Contact Center Stockholm and Elderly direct. The city’s executive office has taken and still takes a great interest in the development of these services.

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The goal is and was to give citizens of Stockholm a better, faster and more easy way to communicate with the city as a complement to the website, actual personal meetings that you need to have and written information that tends to get old real fast. We got to experiments by local interest in two city districts and a steering group to follow and lead this job. We then gave the city council the possibility to, based upon the experience from the two city districts; decide that this was interesting and good enough to scale up for the whole city. A new steering group was formed, a project manager was selected, and all the experiences from the two local districts were taken into this new project. We made new measurements, put up new goals, formed a special line to be able to meet the fast coming needs of the information to elderly people because of their new chances to choose more than before, got a decision from the city council and started the “elderly direct” while actually building it at the same time.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
At first, in the year of 2004, some of the city district executives were interested in NY 311. In 2005 two local city districts tried to copy this in a much smaller scale. A steering group followed this and made measurements following up on the results. In 2006 a proposition was approved by the city council to scale up and create a project for the city as a whole in different areas. A new steering group was formed and a project leader was appointed. The new, larger project was being se up when it became obvious that we needed to get a “fast lane” for the part that was aiming at elderly people. A new proposition for Elderly direct was taken to the city council and was decided upon. “Elderly direct” took form and went into action in the summer of 2008.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The main obstacle concerned the fears in all the fourteen city districts that Elderly direct was to take power away from them, that they were no longer to be in control of all things concerning care for the elderly. This was overcome by endless information, meetings, dialogue and the numbers of very content citizens as far as the local experiments were concerned. Another obstacle was the financing of this new service. This was overcome partly thanks to the fact that the city council had given some special funds to this project, partly since we moved money from the city districts to the “Elderly direct”. W could in advance prove that they would benefit from this in terms of free time to meet more clients and in that way get quicker decision making process in the city districts and thanks to that would no longer be in need of temporary solutions for senior citizens in need of care.

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The city council had in the budget of 2007 made a decision to set aside 650 million SEK for the purpose of making the city services more transparent, more available, for implementing e-services, getting a better website and so on. This money was also used to finance the project Elderly direct. It helped finance the hiring of employees and paying for the IT-system as well as the call center telephone system that we needed. The yearly operating costs are now being paid by the city districts, since they gain from “Elderly direct”.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
“Elderly direct” is located in one of Stockholm’s suburbs which has few jobs, a high number of immigrants, low income rates and high unemployment rate; we have had no difficulties in hiring people. We have all nationalities among the employees and they speak several different languages. They are trained to cope with everything from cultural diversity to anxiety and stress. They have a polite manor but at the same time they are able to finish a conversation “on time” when a lot of people phone at the same time. The locality is newly restored and there for have a high number of employees per square meter without the feeling of being over crowded. We are already on our way to scale up in the city of Stockholm and have added several new assignments for the contact center, which is the center in witch “Elderly direct” is a part. Other cities within Sweden have also shown interest in what we have done so far. Without much effort many others could copy our concept, it is logical, efficient and suites all organizations. Since the city of Stockholm is European Green Capital 2010, sustainability is of great interest in everything we do. Our employees can travel with subway or buses to work. We use smart solutions for energy efficiency in office buildings.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The impact is that elderly people and their relatives get in contact with the city at once and can get answers immediately. We find that it increases the city’s liability when up to 70 % gets answers directly when they phone us and more than 70 % of the requests are met in this one first call. We know by the evaluation that has been done that it increases the senior citizens and their family’s lives, they feel better, are less stressed and more confident that they can receive the services they are entitled to. The fact that it is only one number you need to call, wherever you live in the city and that the employees you get through to are highly trained and skilled professionals who are able to handle most things, have been key factors to the success. We have learned that most people are of a protective nature when it comes to giving up tasks that they have. We have also learned that you can never have too much dialogue initially and that one must always keep the “customer” in sight of what one does and how one organizes the services. The results met in % answered calls within one, 68 % and three 86 %, minutes are along with the number of calls, 63 646 in only four months as well as the rate of solved requests of 74 % a sign that it was a good decision to start up Elderly direct. We also file, in separate documents, how the organization is built and run and the first opinions from the “customers”.


Institution Name:		The city of Stockholm
Institution Type:		Public Organization
Contact Person:		Carina Lundberg Uudelepp
Title:		Deputy CEO of the City
Telephone/ Fax:		+46761229463
Institution's / Project's Website:
E-mail:		ingalill.elwin@stadshuset.stockholm.se
Address:		Ragnar östbergs plan 1
Postal Code:		105 35
City:		Stockholm
State/Province:
Country:		Sweden

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information