This article originally published in Self-Service World magazine's special section, FOCUS: Public Sector & Government Self-Service, June 2007.
Nearly 10 years of self-service government has taught the city of Denton, Texas, a few lessons.
After mapping out a strategy for electronic access in 1995, the city began deploying Web and Interactive Voice Response (IVR)-based services in the late 1990s. By 2000, it installed its first kiosk, an access point for the city's Web site; in 2001, the city moved that kiosk to the lobby of the police department and created its first bill-payment kiosk. In 2003, a second bill-payment kiosk was deployed at Denton's "City Hall in the Mall," a program that opened a satellite government office in the area's major shopping mall to alleviate staffing problems there.
"We wanted to have a City Hall in the Mall presence, but when you lease space you also have to be open during mall hours," said Alex Pettit, the City of Denton's chief technology officer. "Big pain to us, particularly Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons, and extended hours between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So we reached an agreement with [the mall] that if we had a kiosk and it could accept payments, we could reduce our hours of operation."
A grant for city-wide deployment of computers in libraries and other public spaces made the city's Web-access kiosk obsolete and the kiosk was redeployed to the city's police department, where it collected payments via credit card. (It later was moved again, this time to the city's customer service center to handle property tax payments.)
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| An agreement with a local mall allows the Denton city government to operate its office there on a limited schedule, with the kiosks picking up traffic after-hours and on the weekend. (Photo courtesy City of Denton, Texas) |
Lessons learned
The city expected citizens to use credit cards to pay municipal court fines, utility bills and property taxes via the kiosk located in the police department. However, a few short months into deployment proved that wasn't the case. "We found most municipal court fines were paid for by phone," Pettit said.
The city expanded the phone system's capacity to handle the higher-than-expected call volumes. Property taxes usually were handled through the Web or the IVR, and very few people paid by credit card at the kiosk.
The City Hall in the Mall kiosk solved a different problem. That office must be staffed during mall hours, causing a strain on the employees and the city's budget. The deal worked out between mall management and the city allowed the city to cut back the hours the satellite office was open.
"This eliminated overtime, shift differentials and the staffing difficulties we were having," Pettit said. "Even if the kiosk collected nothing, it would still pay for itself in the personnel savings alone."
Developed in conjunction with Blacksburg, Va.-based Tele-Works, the mall kiosk's flexibility in payment options made the program popular with students at the city's two universities, Texas Woman's University and the University of North Texas, who often shared utility payments.
"It was not uncommon for two (roommates) to go to the kiosk, one pay half of their (utility) bill with cash and the other write a check for the other half," Pettit said.
Enabling utility customers to pay their bill is a high priority. According to Pettit, disconnect and reconnect costs the city about $40 to perform. Denton only charges a $30 reconnect fee, though, motivating the town to keep disconnects from happening.
"We have worked very hard to reduce these disconnects, and the kiosk has been one of our tools to do this," he said. In its first year, the program cut disconnects by 25 percent, due in large part to the convenience the kiosks offer and the ability of customers to pay their bills after hours.
Pettit noted that many utility customers pay their bill only when faced with a disconnect notice.
The bulk of transactions at the mall kiosk originally were conducted with cash and check, despite the availability of credit- and debit-card payments. Few people seemed to pay property taxes at the kiosk. In fact, about 99 percent of the kiosk's initial usage came from utility bill payments.
In 2006, the city realized credit card fees would cost in excess of $250,000 a year. To recoup those costs, customers using a credit card now would have to pay a convenience fee. However, the city's bank requires credit-card payments with a convenience fee to be handled separately from payments by cash or check.
The city had to revise its program so that credit cards are accepted only at the kiosks, and through the city Web and IVR systems where the service fee is charged. Cards no longer are accepted at the customer service counters, even during business hours. The customer service counter now accepts only cash and check payments. Consumers who prefer to pay by those methods have to transact business during normal office hours.
Caught between the credit card charges and banking rules, the city has stopped accepting cash through its kiosks.
"There are no fees assessed to the city any longer, and although after-hour transactions have fallen, the total number of transactions have increased as all in-person credit card payments go through the kiosk," Pettit said.
Making e-gov work
Government kiosks can do more than just accept payments — a large number of municipal services, from library book renewal to fishing license sales, makes sense as kiosk applications. But it's not enough to simply install a kiosk. A municipality must consider the users and their business processes.
"If you build a program with the citizens in mind, they'll use it," said Rick Wessels, executive vice president for Portsmouth, R.I.-based Self-Service Networks, formerly MontegoNet: "If a city has long lines of people paying water and sewer bills, they may want a kiosk. Often the missing element is what do they tell customers to get them to use it."
In order for an e-gov kiosk to succeed, the service it provides needs to be a fairly simple one. Alan Webber, senior government analyst for Forrester Research, points to "lower-level transactions" as prime candidates for self-service.
"It should be something that citizens need to do but takes very little time and a low level of transaction," he said. Examples he cites include parking ticket payments, license and library book renewal, automated parking meters, purchasing mass-transit tickets and paying municipal utility bills.
More complex transactions don't make as much sense, he said, even though the technology exists to make them possible. In the case of a driver's license, for instance, some relatively complex biometric information might be collected along with a photo, which would make the experience more involved than many individuals would feel comfortable with.
Webber also emphasized the need for a method of escalation if a problem arises that cannot be handled by kiosk alone.
"If the parking ticket is too old to be paid via the kiosk, then it should inform the citizen that they will be receiving a letter in the mail or an e-mail explaining what the problem is and what they need to accomplish this," he said.
Beyond bill payment
While transactional e-gov kiosks are the most obvious application, both Wessels and Webber see value in using the machines for informational purposes, community outreach, tourism and job training.
Webber added that governments should partner with non-government entities to deliver information and services through the kiosks.
"If a citizen can pay their municipal water bill or parking ticket through a kiosk, why not be able to pay your local cable bill?" he asked. "If a tourist is able to receive information on local public parks, why not also give them information on the chamber of commerce-sponsored musical or concert taking place Saturday night at the park?"
