Is Anyone Listening?
Panama has a centralized phone service that anyone can use to submit reports and complaints about public services. By calling 311, a person’s comments are registered and forwarded to the relevant government authority, who can then resolve the issue. At least in theory. Instead, the prevailing sentiment was that calling 311 with a complaint was a waste of time and energy. It wasn’t clear who was listening and registering the complaint, or if any action would come of it.
A particularly shocking example is the fire department. Of all the complaints submitted about them, only 15% even got any response at all. The sense among the Panamanian public was that the 311 service was functionally useless, and without any alternative ways to submit complaints to the government, distance grew between the public and its government.
New Platform; New Goals
Panama included a commitment in the 2015-2017 action plan to improve the monitoring and follow-up mechanisms of the cases reported through 311, and to expand them with new technological tools and management processes.
The improvements focused on the platform service: the processing, management and resolution of complaints and requests from users of public services.
Overall, through the project, the government hoped to contribute to the values of accountability, transparency, technology and innovation and ensure that citizens receive satisfactory responses to their complaints.
A Public Service Transformed
Through this process, the 311 complaints system was transformed. Responses are much quicker, with departments incentivized to reduce response times to less than 30 days. Importantly, a far bigger proportion of the complaints received are being resolved. Use of the service is increasing year on year. In 2018, 311 reported more than a million annual cases, with 90% receiving a response. In 2019 this rose to 1.75 million contacts from citizens across calls, mail, emails, or through the web page, app, or social media channels.. This can be attributed to an outreach campaign that also required each department to direct potential complaints to 311.
Returning to the example of the Panama Fire Department, the rate at which they responded to complaints went from 15% to 100% in just four months.
The government is now publishing information that it did not publish, or even collect before. These new measures were included in a guide for public offices to improve their responsiveness, and to observe new legal requirements. Public entities are now obligated to include the statistics about their management of cases referred to them through 311 in a dedicated transparency section of their website.
The revamp of the 311 service has been a huge success. The rate of cases resolved is up across the board, each department is incentivized to improve its service, and required to include indicators of how well it responds to feedback on their websites. The web portal and phone app have been advanced so that they now give users the option of tracking their cases through the entire process.
Perhaps the biggest shift has been cultural. Today the 311 service is thought of as reliable and effective. By committing to transparency and ensuring that citizen reports are valued, the Panamanian government has shown that they will recognize their obligations to provide a service the public can trust.
