GATINEAU – Ville de Gatineau (which used to be Hull), Quebec’s fourth largest city, officially inaugurated its 3-1-1 telephone service this week.
Citizens will now have ready access to all municipal services and information and will be able to make requests through this non-urgent call centre (CANU for centre d’appels non-urgents). This service will be delivered by a team of 20 telephone agents, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, responding to citizens’ requests for information and services.
Gatineau is the first city in Quebec and the second one in Canada, a few weeks after Calgary, to offer its citizens a 3-1-1 non-urgent call service. Ottawa, Montréal, Halifax, Edmonton, Toronto, Winnipeg and Windsor should be coming on board before the end of the year.
For this project, Ville de Gatineau looked at the experiences of several American cities that successfully introduced the service, including Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles.
The introduction of this 3-1-1 service involved a $1.3 million investment and the initiative provides an opportunity to channel to one location all the calls that had previously been routed to the city’s different sectors, to acquire a modern and effective new software program and to create an enormous database.
Every day, Ville de Gatineau receives an average 400 to 500 calls from citizens. Approximately 90% of these calls are for general information, while the rest are related to requests.
“Bell Canada’s leading edge technology helps ensure follow-up on such requests,” says the press release.
"This request processing solution helps provide follow-up from initial intake to final closing. Citizens will be able to track their requests through a simple access number at all times, and will be able to find out what has been done and what remains to be done," explained Claude Rousseau, senior vice-president, enterprise and public sector, Québec,
Enterprise Group for Bell Canada.
The 3-1-1 service can be accessed by land line from anywhere within the city limits. Discussions are under way with cell phone companies to provide their users the same service. In the meantime, the latter must call (819) 595-2002 to reach CANU. Similarly, anyone calling from outside the city limits should use this number to reach CANU.
An information campaign – A whole city at your fingertips – targeting the public at large will be launched in August to support the implementation of this 3-1-1 service.
