Making Municipal Services Easier to Use

Fellow residents,

An important topic I wanted to talk to you about in more detail is my CK Service Accelerator plan. The September 23 mayoral candidates’ debate simply didn’t provide enough time for us to explain our answers so voters could get the full picture.

What I hear from residents is that municipal government can be difficult to navigate. The information may be there, but finding it, understanding it, and knowing who is responsible can take too much time. If you want to know what’s happening with a road project, a water main, a permit, or a service request, you should be able to get a straightforward answer. You shouldn’t have to understand the whole structure of municipal government first.

The Service Accelerator is about using technology to move routine work faster and make information easier to understand. Municipal staff need time to deal with the complicated cases where their experience and judgment matter. Residents still need access to a person. Technology should help staff do their work and help residents reach them.

Make projects easier to understand

If council approves a road or water project, people should be able to see what is being done, where it is happening, why it is needed, what it is expected to cost, and how it is being paid for. They should be able to see when work is expected to start and finish, whether it is on budget and on schedule, and why something changed.

A project doesn’t stop mattering to residents after council votes on it. We need to make sure they can follow it through to completion.

Ask CK

A resident should be able to ask, “Why is this road being rebuilt?” or “What did council decide about this project?” The answer would have to come from approved municipal information—bylaws, council decisions, budgets, service standards, and project records. It should show the source, the date, and the department responsible.

And if that information is not available, it should say so. It should never make up an answer.

Smart 311

When someone reports an issue, technology could help staff identify the kind of request, spot a duplicate report, send it to the right department, flag a deadline, and give the resident a clear update.

But people must still be able to speak with a person. We need to make it easier to get help, not put another barrier in the way.

Faster permits and less red tape

For permits, I’m proposing a voluntary service called Permit Ready CK. Before someone formally submits an application, it could help identify a missing document or information that doesn’t match. That could save the applicant and staff from going back and forth over something that could have been caught earlier.

The service would not approve or deny a permit. That decision stays with the people responsible for making it.

Start with what we already have

I’m not proposing that Chatham-Kent immediately spend millions on a new technology platform. We should start by looking at the systems the municipality already owns, including CityView, 311, records, and public-information systems.

Any new work should begin with capped pilots, competitive procurement, and a clear understanding of the full cost before council considers making it permanent.

Measure results, not announcements

Within my first 30 days, I would ask the CAO to identify ten municipal workflows with the largest backlogs, longest waits, most repeat contacts, or greatest economic impact. By day 100, I want a public baseline: how much work is waiting, how long it takes, how often residents have to contact us again, how many staff handoffs there are, and what a completed transaction costs.

Then we test whether a proposed change actually makes the service better. If a pilot reduces delays without creating unacceptable errors, privacy problems, accessibility issues, or a worse experience for residents, council can consider expanding it. If it does not work, we change it or stop it.

What’s important is the result people experience, not an announcement that we introduced a new tool.

Human accountability stays at the centre

There are decisions that must remain with accountable people. Permits, benefits, housing, enforcement, and other decisions that can seriously affect someone’s life should not be handed over to an algorithm.

Before any of these systems go into production, there must be appropriate privacy, security, accessibility, and human-rights reviews. There must be records of what the system did, and ways for a person to correct, override, or appeal a decision where appropriate.

Municipal employees need to be part of this work as well. They know where the delays are and where a process is more complicated than it looks from the outside. We should have the people who do the work helping to design, test, and evaluate any tool that is supposed to improve it.

This is about making government work better for residents

Whether you live in Chatham, Wallaceburg, Dresden, Ridgetown, Tilbury, Blenheim, or one of our smaller communities, you should be able to get clear information and understand what your municipality is doing. You shouldn’t need to know which department to call or search through a 200-page council report to get a basic answer.

That is what the CK Service Accelerator is meant to do: move routine work faster, make information easier to understand, give residents better access to services and staff, and keep people accountable for the decisions that matter.

We start with what we have, we measure whether it works, and we report the results to the community.

— Randy Hope