Digital and Easy Complaints: A Single Platform for Fast and Accessible Service

Most of the public entities only had physical complaint books and no complaint handling processes to improve services to citizens. The innovative proposal was co-created between citizens and civil servants from different entities at the national level. It contemplates a standardised digital platform as a single channel for public entities and improves the management of citizen complaints through an agile and user-friendly process focused on the citizen experience.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

Most of the public entities only had physical complaint books and no complaint handling processes to improve services to citizens. The proposal was co-created between citizens and civil servants from different entities at the national level. It contemplates a standardised digital platform as a single channel for public entities and allows for improved management of citizen complaints, through an agile and user-friendly process.

In order to understand the problem of complaints management, the Secretariat of Public Management of the PCM (Secretaría de Gestión Pública de la PCM) developed field studies between 2017 and 2018, based on an innovative approach focused on the citizen and public servant. From that exploration process, the following findings were obtained: Public Servants reported that the Complaints Book did not fulfil its purpose, as it served only as a register and that the citizens' feeling after complaining was one of dissatisfaction. They believed having no manuals, procedures, or rules meant that the public servant did not know how to act. From their perspective, citizens felt that the State was not interested in improving the quality of the services it offers. Corruption generated distrust in dealing with complaints and they felt that their complaints would only be solved if they had contacts in the State. Overall, public entities only had physical complaint books, the complaint handling process was not clear or was manual and disjointed, and complaints were not given importance to improve the quality of services provided to citizens. For this reason, the Secretariat of Public Management decided to position a new approach to complaints management in public entities, emphasising the modernisation and innovation of the process.

In this regard, the proposed solution began in 2017 and was co-created in conjunction with citizens and civil servants from different entities nationwide, which included a standardised digital platform as a single channel that integrates all public entities and improves internal management for handling citizen complaints, through an agile and user-friendly process. It also provides reports to take action and allows citizens to follow up on their complaints in real time. Its main function is to strengthen communication between the State and citizens in a timely and satisfactory manner.

The project has followed the following stages: i) Scope definition (functional and non-functional requirements) ii) Citizen understanding iii) Prototyping and testing iv) Development and adjustments and v) Re-regulation vi) Pilot vii) Implementation and deployment viii) Supervision and monitoring. Its main results have been: The platform has been progressively implemented since August 2020 at national and international level at all three levels of government. Its implementation has been achieved in more than 181 entities, which have dealt with more than 99,727 citizen complaints in a comprehensive and satisfactory manner, with an average response time of 10 working days (when the maximum period is 30 working days).

Capacity building was also achieved through technical assistance, virtual training and MOOC courses (14,610 employees trained) so that public servants can carry out optimal management and internalise the importance of complaints in order to improve the quality of their services. The experience was the winner of the Special Prize for Public Innovation of the 2022 Good Practices in Public Management Award, an annual recognition organised by Ciudadanos al Día since 2005.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

One of the most important aspects of the project is that it develops the complaint route from a citizen's perspective, and at the same time takes into account the management of complaints by the public administration. Previous experiences, including the Complaints Book itself, considered normative aspects so that the citizen's complaint could be accepted and processed, without taking into account that the citizen might not necessarily know the regulations. The single platform guides the citizen who submits a complaint in an easy and friendly way, so that they can express their dissatisfaction with a service, even if they do not know the regulations on complaints and claims.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

The Secretariat of Public Management is in charge of the project and the Secretariat of Government and Digital Transformation (Secretaría de Gobierno y Transformación Digital) also participated. The National School of Public Administration provided support to the SGP during the development of the MOOC course on complaint management. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)provided financial support for the implementation of the project. And groups of citizens from Lima, Iquitos, Apurímac, Abancay and La Libertad actively participated in the solution.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The innovation has benefited the 32 million Peruvian citizens living in Peru and abroad, as well as foreign citizens who carry out procedures with Peruvian public entities.

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The platform has been progressively implemented since August 2020 at national and international level in 161 countries, at the three levels of government. Its implementation has been achieved in more than 181 entities, which have been attending to more than 99,727 citizen complaints in a comprehensive and satisfactory manner, with an average attention time of 10 working days (when the maximum period is 30 working days). It is also possible to obtain information on the citizen's perception of the attention and response received through the digital platform report. Results have indicated that 38% of citizens are satisfied with the attention they have been receiving.

Challenges and Failures

Main challenges: Insufficient staff in the initial stage of implementation of the digital platform. Learning curve for new staff to provide specialised technical assistance. Constant changes in the technical staff of the Secretariat of Government and Digital Transformation (SGTD) in charge of developing the digital platform. Civil servants with little knowledge of the new regulations or fear of dealing with citizen complaints. There was insufficient information on the conditions and technical facilities for accessing virtual services through the internet by the entities. Over-regulation in some entities (regulators, public companies and others). Resistance to change on the part of some entities with special requirements for the implementation of the new platform. The Covid-19 health emergency has generated restrictions, isolation, change of priorities, and the need to adapt to the new normality.

Conditions for Success

To be the governing body for the modernisation of the State. To have a multidisciplinary team (legal, innovation, communication, processes, etc.) that could contemplate all the dimensions of the project.

Replication

The experience arose from the need to modernise management, which is why research was initiated to find out the needs of citizens and entities by applying the Innovation methodology with the support of experts. Benchmarking was also applied to models from other countries (Colombia, Chile, Panama, among others) to gather new innovative functionalities. The proposals were then tested and resulted in the first platform that integrates all public entities for an agile, user-friendly management that reduces time, generates statistical data and allows entities to identify problems. Therefore, although the experience has been developed in Peru, it is highly replicable in other countries under similar conditions.

Lessons Learned

During the design of the digital platform, a multidisciplinary team was assembled (research, technology and infrastructure, innovation, legal and communications). On the other hand, when moving from a manual process to a digital one, it was difficult to dimension the infrastructure that would house the information of more than 32 million citizens. It was identified that many entities did not have defined processes and were applying repealed regulations. For this reason, personalised technical assistance was provided during the elaboration and updating of all related documents per entity. On the other hand, during the implementation, cases were registered that were not foreseen in the platform, such as complaints in temporary offices, merged entities, complaints from minors, citizens without ID cards; therefore, personalised legal opinions were issued and specific processes were defined for each case.