Everyone in government is familiar with the nightmarish stories of customers getting caught in the bureaucratic maze of unreturned phone calls, lost mail, waiting on hold and clueless staffers.
Determined to give the government a better reputation and fix similar internal problems, the Education Department's National Library of Education opened a publication center called ED Pubs that provides a one stop shop for the department's educational and informational products.
"Many of our customers just didn't know which office to call to get a product, but with Ed Pubs it's just one number," NLE Management and Program Analyst Jim Clemmens said.
No longer are the department's 16 offices responsible for their own warehousing and distribution of such materials as "Growing Up Drug Free," or the Free Application for Student Aid. Now, customers can easily obtain the educational publication, brochure, poster or video they need from one central source. At the same time, the department is able to keep an accurate inventory.
The Ed Pubs facility, located in Jessup, Md., handles requests through a toll free line (1-877-4ED-PUBS), Web site (http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html), fax line (301-470-1244) and email (edpubs@inet.ed.gov). Open since the end of May, the center has saved $120,000 and receives about 550 requests for information a day. In September, Ed Pubs operators answered over 10,000 calls and fulfilled about 12,000 orders.
"This is something that is really new for the department," National Library of Education Director Blane Dessy said during a recent interview and tour of the ED Pubs site. "What we're trying to do through this project is not only improve our management process, but also improve our customer service, and I think it's been a success."
The central facility operates through a performance-based contract with Aspen Systems Corporation. The contract specifies several performance indicators that Aspen must meet, like sending every order within 2-3 days in the most inexpensive manner or answering each phone call within 45 seconds.
"It's partnering," Performance-based contracting consultant Walter Kalman said of the unique contract. "It's not like in the old days when the monitoring document would be an out to get you kind of document."
Ed Pubs customer service representatives man the phones from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Spanish-speaking customer service representatives are also available, as is a 24-hour fax-on-demand service.
Steve Moore, an Office of the Secretary senior management advisor, said the marriage of better customer service and performance based contracting benefits the customer and the internal structure of the agency.
"The degree to which the agency is accepted by the public at large, by the student at large, by the politicians, is measured by the value we add to our deliverable goods," Moore said.
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