Working to provide customer-centred services online

The Auditor-General’s report Auckland Council: Working to provide customer-centred services online was presented to the House of Representatives today.

The services provided by Auckland Council and its council-controlled organisations affect every Aucklander. These services include, for example, issuing resource and building consents, collecting rubbish and recycling, providing drinking water, and providing public transport.

The Council is intent on improving the services it provides and making it easier for people to use those services. To address this, many of its services are being put online and simplified.

As part of our regular reviews of the Council’s service performance, we looked at how the Council was managing a programme of work to put services online, and we looked closely at two projects in that programme.

The Council delivered the projects we looked at largely on time and to budget. We saw some good practice, including using an iterative approach to deliver projects, getting feedback from customers and staff before and during the project, and appropriate management of project risks and issues.

We’ve made three recommendations to address areas that we identified as needing improvement. This includes the Council’s governance and accountability arrangements for the programme and projects, how it reports on the progress of projects, and how it demonstrates that the financial and non-financial benefits from projects are being achieved.

We encourage other agencies to consider this report when planning to invest in information and technology systems to improve how they deliver services. The report also has wider lessons for the public sector about governance and accountability arrangements for programmes and projects.

A two-page summary and epub are also available on our website. We’ve also published a blog post about this report.

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