15 August 2019
Media: Rotorua Daily Post
Topic: Satisfaction surveys
Enquiry
Reporter sought copy of 2018 community satisfaction survey and sought confirmation about when this year's results would be available to the public.
Reporter said: In 2016, the report came out in October and was said to be a four-month delay at the time. Why is there a delay in getting the report out? Has the survey already been conducted?
Additional questions:
Can you please clarify what length of time a couple of years it? It appears there was a satisfaction survey done last year as it was referenced in the annual report.
And does that mean the way the council will now be measuring the community satisfaction will be online after a person uses an online service?
Response
Reporter was told that, as explained in CE Geoff Williams' response, the way RLC measures customer satisfaction has changed and surveys like those previously conducted were not done for 2018 or 2019 because of those changes.
From Rotorua Lakes Council Chief Executive Geoff Williams:
As part of its 2018-28 Long-term Plan Council changed how it measures performance to better reflect data availability and how services are performing. We report regularly on service performance through the Operations and Monitoring committee.
"Satisfaction is an important indicator but is just one indicator of performance and we have changed the focus to getting feedback when people use a service via an online survey. This has proven to be highly successful with more people providing a response and those responses coming from people who have had a direct transaction or experience with a council service.
"The results are currently being compiled and as they were last year, satisfaction results will be presented to Council as part of the adoption of the Annual Report and Audit review in October.
Additional information:
Under the Local Government Act 2002 councils must measure service levels being provided to the community and must report these in the Annual Report, which must be audited and adopted by 31 October.
Regarding reference to regular reporting of service performance through the Operations and Monitoring Committee - in the agenda for that committee these are the Non-financial performance reports.
Clarification provided:
The Annual Report 2018 is for the 2017/18 financial year (so the year to 30 June 2018) - so the last time a survey of the old type was conducted was 2017 (which you've seen on the website).
A new performance management framework was adopted as part of the new long-term plan (the 2018-28 Long-term Plan which was adopted last year) and this year (the 2018/19 financial year) is the first year of using the new performance management framework including a new method of gathering satisfaction data.
Regarding measuring satisfaction: people who use the services which have satisfaction as a performance measure (that's not all services and not just online services) are invited to complete a survey to provide feedback.
