| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The UCIRM scheme is the new PR initiative directly contacting with the citizens of Üsküdar where people are immediately heard by the authority, sensitive values are cared for and a new service approach is built upon this foundation. Based on these sensitivities, all major transformations throughout human life cycle have been examined and each factor that would socially and culturally impact the happiness, health, education, security and living environment of the people has separately been assessed.
As a result of these assessments, contact points ensuring consistent interaction with citizens from the moment of birth to death have been identified.
The initiative has been launched on May 1, 2012 until October 1, 2013;
72.635 Uskudar citizens have been visited on site, and 38.152 people have been contacted face to face.
3.700 Roses and Letters: During the initial year of their marriage, 3.700 couples have been visited at home and greeted with rose. A specialist letter including the regards of our Mayor and pearls of wisdom for a long-lasting, happy and peaceful marriage have been presented,
After home visits, 1.800 families declaring their desire to take their children to theatre have been gifted with tickets to a children's theatre play.
We organized the personalized submission of 1.550 movie tickets to movie lovers declaring their desire to go to cinema with their family.
We have presented books directly published in our organization to 1.150 citizens declaring their interest in books during home visits.
We have organized a yacht trip to 1.180 persons that could not enjoy the Bosporus joy so far despite residing in Üsküdar to experience the full natural and historical thrill of Istanbul.
We have submitted congrats letter to 1.989 artisans that have started a business in Üsküdar to convey wishes for utmost profit and fruitful business.
We have submitted our mayor's congrats letter to 12.000 Grade 1 students (as identified through the data mining method) newly starting their study.
We have submitted a welcome letter to 2.856 new inhabitants of Üsküdar, describing which culture centre, information house, sports complex, health centre and public buildings are located in their neighbourhood.
We have sent SMS/email messages to inhabitants of the neighbourhood, for which infrastructural and superstructural works are scheduled, on the start and completion date of such works.
We have photographed 11.848 demands through on-situ demand mapping system during home visits, and instantly forwarded them to relevant directorates. As addressing such demands on-site ensures to create reasonable solutions soon and speed up the process, we could get higher rates of satisfied feedbacks.
Again thanks to this process, the Newborn Greeting Team has paid congrats visits to 4.632 parents, and welcome visits to 2.316 infants honouring Uskudar.
As a commitment of standing by each and every Uskudar citizen during good and bad time from the moment of birth until death, the condolence team has supported and does keep supporting 2.009 heart-stricken families in consideration of their actual requirements.
21.455 Greeting Messages and Emails: Special occasions of Uskudar citizens as well as the employees of the Uskudar Municipality have been tracked and greeted through the CIRM system.
While the poor and the destitute living in the district has effectively been addressed, relevant bodies have been mobilized to enhance the wealth of such people. The old, handicapped and needers requiring care as well as the relatives to the handicapped have been informed on social rights they are entitled to as well as the liabilities they are exempt from. Housewives crafting hand-made products have been allowed with the opportunity to sell their products and benefit from municipality-sponsored initiatives.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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Flourished along the idea of driving a more effective civil involvement in the management of the district of residence, the CIRM initiative has been designed by Mr. Hasan Ekmen, Vice Mayor of Uskudar, and entrusted to Mrs. Türkan Bilim for coordination and enhancement.
All these efforts are run in a coordinated fashion at municipal directorates, offices and municipal culture centres, rehabilitation centres, gyms, information houses, soup kitchens, animal houses, and centres contributing to female labour.
Primary stakeholders for Uskudar municipality setting the whole district as its target audience (532.182 citizens) is the entire Uskudar population.
Other public institutions (electricity, water and sewer, natural gas, healthcare, employment agencies, etc.) represent other major stakeholders.
Changes occurring in the life cycle of citizens should regularly and permanently be updated. Non-governmental organizations, political parties with which citizens’ affiliate, workplaces of citizens, civil registries, schools and hospitals serve as resource to such updates. Thanks to official contacts built with these entities, any change can promptly be integrated into our system, and these institutions maintain their critical standing in our spectrum of stakeholders.
Suppliers of press materials presented to citizens as part of customized services, and contractors organizing and holding social and cultural events represent other major stakeholders.
The software company developing our database, research companies that regularly report the process and provide consultancy service, and auditors following up ISO and occupational safety standards for our organization are the other prominent stakeholders.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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Budget calculations were made during the design of the initiative, and accordingly investments were assigned to the following items for smooth execution of the initiative;
Technical infrastructure, hardware and stationery expenditures; Research expenditures, software cost of the initiative, procurement of tablets to be employed during the initiative, mobile phones for inter-team communication, physical project setting for office processes, computers, office phones, printers and photocopiers, archive materials and any and all stationery.
Consultancy services; consultancy services procured to guarantee that actions are run in line with international standards, consultancy services procured from agencies specialized in field services, survey and assessment,
Staffing expenditures; new recruitments, technical and personal development trainings for employees, procurement of motivation-boosting events and organizations, procurement of vehicle for field services, fuel and service costs of the vehicle, organizational attire and other organizational materials.
Courier and gift expenditures; In customized deliveries, cinema, theatre ticket expenses, courier costs associated with celebration for business start-ups, school letters of achievement, welcome to our district letters; coffee and a couple of cup sets gifted to the citizens visited, baby's care and garment costs.
Transport expenses; expenditures associated with supplies gifted to citizens by field teams delivering celebrations, condolences and roses, costs of vehicles used in the process and other ancillary expenditures.
Press Expenditures; delivery of municipal periodicals and non-periodicals to citizens, introductory brochures for municipal services and cultural and social events, monthly newspaper publications.
Each title above represents the resources employed as well. For efficient and effective utilization of the resources, subtotals for each budget item have been calculated after setting up the general budget.
Project is funded by municipal resources. Municipal income consists of citizen taxes.
Citizens' incomes are recycled into impressive services dedicated to them.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The citizen's demand and expectation of each citizen interviewed has individually been considered. What additions to or removals from their neighbourhood, even their streets of residence would please them have been identified directly through their own statements. İ
nitiative allows us to deliver the service right up to the door the citizen after hearing him in his own world without exposing him to the distressing bureaucracy. Without any discrimination between citizens visited, we have put each and every idea into play promptly for the sake of building the happy city of the future.
This has culminated in a wealthy texture analysis for the district locals. We could be in close acquaintance with the people we serve. While clearly revealing the demographics, we could clearly get the ownership status, financial possibilities, educational background, gender distribution, breakdown of children and young throughout the district, and occupational status of citizens. These outputs constituted the score card of each neighbourhood. Thanks to these score cards, various findings about migrations throughout the neighbourhoods, licensing process in workplaces and their impacts in district economy, and unemployment facts could, for the first time, be identified so clearly.
Awareness in being a city inhabitant has been promoted. Channels where joint solutions are devised to exhibit city-specific individual attitudes and behaviours have been created. Meetings mobilizing various social communities (recovery of waste oils, waste batteries into national economy discussed during house meetings of housewives) have been held. Emphasizing how critical the ideas of citizens are in reshaping the city and setting management processes have nurtured the sense of belonging to city. Opinions have been acquired from citizens on projects socially discussed.
Driven by this awareness; communication channels highlighting involvement, pluralism and tolerance have been developed where national will is in the background with further integration of distinctive opinions into the management process. Different social groups being member to NGOs have been brought together in various organizations.
Our project has been catching a gigantic interest from the very beginning of its inauguration. When citizens have told about the practices to their friends or relatives in other districts or provinces, such people have started to expect the same service from their municipalities, leading to the growing appearance of institutions asking to visit for learning about the methodology of the initiative. Acting across the motto "knowledge grows when shared", we have supplied information in good faith to each requesting body.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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According to existing conventional public practices, citizens communicate their demands by directly visiting the municipality. The CIRM project is setting a precedent in the public sector so that all services are now principally delivered to the citizen.
We employ the Social Texture Analysis Form to identify the addressees and methods of these service items. In this form, every detail of households besides personal data is recorded. The solution process for citizens communicating their demands in addition to this data is swiftly kicked off through customized methods built.
All variables defined as requirement in the life cycle can be the subject of "customized municipal service", and such variables may be augmented and varied. The data mining method is being employed to implement customized municipal servicing. Thanks to this method, target service items and addressees can clearly be identified from a wide array of data. For instance, it is currently impossible to identify the number of people who are i) at the age of 40-60, ii) physicians, iii) residing at the neighbourhood of Acıbadem, and iv) willing to get notified by email of Classical Music concerts.And people involved in the table yielded by this system will start getting customized services.
Citizens pointing to the same issue constitute a natural public opinion in terms of the concentration and breakdown in their streets and neighbourhoods as well as the finalization of their request. Accordingly, a visit to a neighbourhood has revealed the following findings. A paving work on a steep street last year led to the complaint and dissatisfaction throughout the neighbourhood, particularly raised by 55% of citizens who are vehicle owners. The paving method employed was to lay cobblestones. However, this was posing the risk for the vehicle to slip in winter, and expand and displace in summer, constituting threat for other vehicles and pedestrians. In the traditional system, the complaining citizen is expected to visit the municipality to report his complaint. Upon the visits of the USIP team to the neighbourhood concerned, the issue was pinpointed on site and photographed. And this led to the conclusion that such paving work was not suitable for the steep street, triggering a new action to offer a suitable solution to the citizens. On that sense, USIP is the municipal eye on the street.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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As the municipal management represents a specific political identity, visits to citizens of opposing view have appeared as an obstacle. It has been emphasized that the initiative is not a transient election-focussed practice and that it is free of political concerns, and the nature of the initiative has clearly been described. No stage of the initiative includes any political commitment.
As visiting citizens on site is an unprecedented initiative, some segments have expressed their concern for security surrounding it. Action was taken to infill confidence by issuing customized ID cards for the staff, distributing written information and documents stressing the corporate nature of the initiative, hanging introductory banners on the streets to be visited by the staff, and making public SMS and email disclosures.
Team-mate spirit, motivation of the field team, potential of any drawback in service to slow down or halt the initiative individually constitute the risk factors. Motivating programs and trips have been launched for the sake of avoiding or minimizing them, and trainings have been received on the requirements of being a team and on personal development. For these efforts, the field team has identified itself as the Üsküdar Field Communication Professionals (USIP), and created its own logo.
Finding nobody in home visits represents a functional obstacle for us. It’s not possible to reach the working class during weekday visits. To overcome this trouble, revisits are paid at reasonable times on Saturdays.
Another issue is to update the details of citizens registered with the UCIRM system. Changes throughout the life cycle of citizens should be reflected to the system. For such cases that may serve as barriers to our efficient work, joint systems and cooperation have been developed upon formal contacts with appropriate agencies retaining citizen data. Such sorts of changes are regularly updated in our system.
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