Feedback is an effective tool of influence. In Oulu, you can give feedback to the city around the clock, every day of the year.
The electronic service on the city's website acts as a channel for feedback on community and environmental services, where residents can give feedback on issues related to housing, construction, planning, land use, streets, traffic, boat berths, and parks and green areas. The feedback management system is the location-based asiointi.fi - Feedback.
Initiative or feedback?
A functioning feedback channel brings versatile means of influence to the municipality.
Administration manager Ville Kauppi says that Oulu offers its residents several different channels through which they can influence the city's operations and their own living environment. Feedback is a fast and effective way to promote things.
"It is often thought that the effectiveness of a municipal initiative is greater than that of feedback, although in practice, especially everyday matters are handled faster through the feedback channel."
Kauppi specifies that the municipal initiative, which does not require consideration by the board, will be processed by the same officials and employees of the municipality as the feedback.
However, responding to municipal initiatives requires a formal process from the authority, which is comparatively slow. Initiatives are directed from the registries to the administrative managers of the service areas, who direct them in their own service area either directly to the persons responsible for the matter or to the head of the area of responsibility. The aim is to respond to municipal initiatives within three months. Messages sent through the feedback service can be answered more directly.
"Most of the feedback can be answered within the target time, which is three days. Some of the initiative-type issues can be handled very quickly if they come through the feedback service," says Oulu city gardener Heikki Pulkkinen.
"It is often thought that the effectiveness of a municipal initiative is greater than that of feedback, although in practice, especially everyday issues are handled faster through the feedback channel."
— Ville Kauppi , administrative manager, city of Oulu
To make the bureaucracy lighter
If you want to make the operations of the municipalities more efficient, the bureaucracy must be lightened. "It's worth favoring light and fast feedback channels and distinguishing them clearly from initiatives that require a wider processing process", Kauppi says and continues that communication should emphasize when it is necessary to take an initiative and when it is better to use bureaucratically lighter and more efficient channels.
In Oulu, the number of municipal initiatives has already decreased somewhat. Kauppi believes that people learn to make an impact through the feedback service when they notice that feedback is answered and things are progressed quickly. "The goal is that municipal initiatives are only made about things that need to be treated as initiatives," he says.
Speed and transparency in the feedback process
In the electronic service, feedback is routed directly to the right person, which speeds up the processing of the matter considerably. "When feedback control is structured well, control bureaucracy is reduced," says Kauppi.
The feedback service also creates transparency in the process. By browsing the published feedback, it is easy to see if someone else has already approached the city about a certain matter. This way, the same things are not necessarily asked again.
In addition to reducing bureaucracy and speeding up the processing time, feedback has another important advantage compared to the municipal initiative. Regarding the initiatives, the citizen does not know at what stage the processing of the matter is going. In the electronic service, the feedback giver is able to follow at which processing stage the matter is progressing at any given time.
In Oulu, the benefits of openness and transparency are pursued on a larger scale. "The goal is to open the feedback into open data, which enables the development of various easy-to-use services for the municipalities," says Oulu's information management expert Tapio Matinmikko.
Fewer interruptions to the working day
Even though feedback is of the utmost importance in terms of the urban environment and the development of operations, communications via phone often interrupt other work.
Pulkkinen says that feedback coming through the feedback service can be processed at a time of day that suits you. The city of Oulu has also expanded the feedback received through the service to include regional contractors. "The contractor responds to feedback related to work performance from his own area," continues Pulkkinen.
When we have a meeting with the contractors once a month, the report can be printed directly from the feedback system. Matinmikko says that reporting the amount and content of feedback is easier, which in part enables the development of operations based on the feedback given.
Feedback from the whole city
In addition to giving feedback, the people of Oulu have many opportunities to influence. For example, statutory hearings, traditional and electronic discussion forums, a 3D laboratory and various workshops offer city dwellers the opportunity to participate in the planning of their living environment, but for matters that can be promoted with a lighter handling, an electronic feedback service is quite a functional solution.
In Oulu, the feedback service has proven to be so effective that the city plans to expand the electronic service to cover the entire city's feedback.
"The goal is that municipal initiatives are made only on issues that need to be treated as initiatives."
— Tapio Matinmikko, information management specialist, city of Oulu
