Baltimore to host seminar on CitiStat program

Program offers solutions for managing and responding to non-emergency citizen requests

The city of Baltimore will host a conference Oct. 2–4 to present Mayor Martin O’Malley’s CitiStat program. The mayor’s goal of making Baltimore a “safer and cleaner” city led to the creation of CitiStat, a real-time performance measurement tool that the city said is improving operational efficiency and staff accountability throughout local government. Participants will learn best practices through panel discussions, presentations and site visits with Baltimore department officials that can be applied to their own jurisdictions.

Baltimore launched CitiStat in 2000. By 2001, with a need to resolve thousands of citizen service requests daily, Baltimore decided to enhance its CitiStat process a step further by linking it to Motorola’s enterprise-wide customer service request system. The CSR system gives Baltimore the ability to provide information to its citizens, track requests for services and assign work crews to resolve non-emergency service requests.

“Our mayor is concerned about how well we perform after we hang up the phone and the service request is initiated,” said Elliot H. Schlanger, the city’s chief information officer. “And if we capture every service request in the city the same way and start to track them, this tool can be a very significant executive information system for monitoring performance through all of the agencies.”

In this 2½ day seminar, participants will learn about the results Baltimore has realized, including:

• reduced overtime.

• increased city revenue.

• processing of incoming calls four times faster.

Featured speakers include Schlanger and John Kost, vice president and research director at Gartner, a research and advisory firm that helps clients understand technology and drive business growth.

Schlanger has 23 years experience in the information technology field and has formulated and executed enterprise-wide information system strategies. He developed the technology behind CitiStat and implemented the 3-1-1 One Call Center/CitiTrack Customer Service Request system application for citizen call intake and citywide work order management.

Kost will present Gartner’s view of 3-1-1 systems and approaches to customer relationship management for the public sector. Kost is known for his work in information technology management and procurement reform and has experience in the private and public sectors. He started the state and local sales organization at Siebel Systems and served as vice president for Worldwide Business Development in TRW’s Public Sector systems integration business. Kost spent 20 years in government in Michigan culminating as the state’s chief information officer. He also previously served as chief deputy state welfare director and director of policy for the Michigan Senate.

The conference is for elected officials, CIOs, city managers, county executives and department heads. Anyone involved in the operation of municipal services can apply what they learn about Baltimore’s CitiStat program and supporting enterprise-wide customer service request system. Attendees will be in a position to assess the potential return on investment benefits of implementing a CSR system within their own community. Motorola is a sponsor of this event.

For registration or additional information the seminar, contact Charie Golson at 800-967-3453.