An interactive voice response system expands municipal services in Yellowknife, Northwest territories.

• Author: Charpentier, Robert

Using easy-to-adapt technology, the city provides citizens with round-the-clock information access and tax and fee payment options without adding staff.

In the City of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, as in many other municipal jurisdictions, in recent years, public demands for increased services have coincided with escalating costs of municipal operations. Because of its geographic location in northern Canada, Yellowknife has particularly high municipal service delivery costs. These costs are the result of power rates being triple the national average; heating fuel, gasoline and diesel, and labour rates are 30 percent higher than the national average. These factors, in addition to regional economic uncertainty, led the city council in 1990 to take a firm position on cost control, directing that there be no staff increases. Annual municipal growth had exceeded 3 percent since 1991, however, and the addition of 800 households placed more demands on municipal services. During the same time period, the city's accounting division staff dropped two person years. The active real estate market placed an ever-increasing demand on the city's tax clerk for tax certificates required for property conveyancing, resulting in frequent backlogs in generating tax certificates and responding to tax-related inquiries. The dilemma facing the city's finance department was how to do more with less.

At the same time, the public was demanding improved service for paying bills at city hall. Since the city's hours of operation were similar to most businesses and the territorial government, which is the largest employer in the city, most of the public's opportunity to pay bills at city hall was limited to noon hours and coffee breaks. This resulted in long, time-consuming queues and created an unbalanced and more stressful workload for the accounting staff entering the cash receipts. City council's directive prevented hiring additional staff or expanding hours. With these dilemmas facing the finance department, the manager of computer services and systems looked for a solution. The solution that was adopted enables people to pay their bills at their own convenience by making city hall available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It reduced inconvenience for both city hall staff and the public. This was achieved with the installment of interactive voice response (IVR) systems.

IVR for Better Service

Interactive voice response technology gives Yellowknife citizens access to city hall by touch-tone phone. Using the phone keypad to enter data, citizens receive computer-generated voice information direct from the city's computer records and can pay for services.

This technology has been in existence for a number of years since the introduction of touch-tone phones. Its use had been limited to large corporations because of its high cost. About five years ago, when IVR technology moved to a personal computer-based platform, it became more affordable. Because the IVR application exists as a separate "layer" above existing computer systems, there is no change to an organization's computer system or data. The IVR system...