Customer Relationship Management: application for parliamentary information services

Abstract

Parliamentary information services are concerned about being a source of information to both Members of Parliament and the society. Members of Parliament because they are decision makers who face the challenge of meeting society’s demands in a changing environment and citizens because they are the center of the legislative process.

However, working with these two dimensions of clientele can be challenging. If the work processes are not well established, there will be problems affecting the efficiency of the tasks. In terms of products and services offered to Members of Parliament, much has already been done. Therefore, longing to be closer to citizens, respond to their information inquiries and listen to their requests, Parliaments have been designing multiple channels of communication. This effort can become unsuccessful and create barriers to the accomplishment of a good communication between the Parliament and the society. In addition, can be time consuming, affecting the whole system of information provision to Members of Parliament.

Aware of this challenge and already facing difficulties with multiple communication channels, different technological structures, and staff, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies defined a project plan to determine a corporate governance model for the relationship with the internal and external public. The main purpose of the project was to define and implement an integrated management system to deal with the requests. Moreover, develop policies to respond to these demands in a constant movement of collaboration among the administrative areas responsible for the management of communication channels. As a result, it was expected that the relationship management model achieved high level of excellence in responding requests by: defining competencies in attending demands, eliminating redundancies, keeping integrated files with information about individuals, and offering personalized support. From the citizens’ point of view, contribute to their education and perception of the parliament, promote their participation in debates within the parliament, and promote citizenship. Due to the expertise in dealing with inquiries, the Center for Information and Documentation (Cedi) was elected to manage the project. This paper aims to describe how the project was conducted, present the results and show how they have changed and improved the processes of making information accessible for Members of Parliament and the society.