People disadvantaged in this case
Miami-Dade County is home to over 2.3 million diverse residents living in 35 municipalities and unincorporated areas. The diversity and growth of the County’s population presented proliferating challenges to service delivery in local government offices.  Residents were often uncertain of how to solicit services from government, and avenues for customer feedback were unclear. To make matters more difficult, customer service in different jurisdictions of the County vary widely. One overlooked aspect of access to public services in large metropolitan areas is that, even within a single region, ease of access often depends on the individual offices. Miami-Dade County reformers resolved to unify and improve customer service with the help of community members themselves.

How the innovation improved access
As Miami-Dade government innovators looked for ways to overhaul their service provision, they chose their reforms with the customer in mind.  When the reforms began, there were already two critical, countywide service delivery initiatives in place: miamidade.gov and the 3-1-1 Answer Center. The County created the web portal as a self-service solution for customers seeking access to government information; the 3-1-1 Answer Center was launched thereafter as a full-service equivalent for the telephone. However, the goal of the Government Information Center’s creators was not only to give information and services to customers, but also to create an interactive model of service that would invite community members to collaborate with their government on service delivery. This would give citizens access to basic services, but also to the technologies needed to influence how these services would be delivered.
The first step in the creation of the County’s new model of customer service was thus the consolidation of existing customer service initiatives under the auspices of the new Government Information Center. This initial stage gave innovators a way of centralizing data collection and analysis so that geographical differences in information access could be overcome. 
Recognizing that centralizing the County’s customer service initiatives alone was not enough to improve information provision, reformers then created an analytical unit for the Information Center. This unit evaluated service delivery performance and conducted research to determine what the community at large wanted in terms of customer service from its government offices. By both centralizing and performing qualitative analysis on customer service in Miami-Dade County, innovators were able to create a government-wide Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system across jurisdictional boundaries. 
Additional feedback mechanisms, however, were still necessary to achieve end-to-end customer service management.  In turn, the Government Information Center set up a reporting unit dedicated to aggregating, analyzing, and communicating the data across the enterprise. The unit would report monthly service channel data to key departments, keeping them aware of customer service performance and offering actionable recommendations.  Supplemental data collection methodologies, including a redesigned Countywide Secret Shopper Program, were applied to provide fresh perspectives on the customer experience.

Obstacles encountered
As with any cross-jurisdictional reform initiatives, the Government Information Center met with some administrative resistance from civil servants with a vested interest in the status quo.  Some departments also resisted the Center’s promotion of organizational transparency. The 3-1-1 Answer Center, for example, has set new standards for reduced wait times and department-to-department transfers during customer service calls, creating revised benchmarks for departmental call handling. Reporting initiatives have supplied performance data from CRM software and customer research efforts such as the Secret Shopper Program. Performance data place the customer at the forefront of reform, but make some departments uneasy.

The results of the innovation
Promoting cross-boundary collaboration and one-stop-shop solutions, the Government Information Center has simplified service delivery for citizens, who most often are unaware of jurisdictional boundaries. Municipalities within the county have been able to develop strategies to achieve transparency and accountability using the performance data the Center supplies. Governing officials have also found the Center’s data useful in designing policy at all levels. 
Future efforts to capitalize on the centralized Customer Relationship Management technologies include integration with other management systems, a revamping of the in-person experience, enterprise feedback management tools, additional streamlining of enterprise content management applications, and a redesigned web-portal designed around customer “personas.” All are innovations made possible by the consolidation of service initiatives. This initiative has cut across bureaucracy and jurisdiction, moving towards the goal of a “borderless” government environment, and all by focusing on the practical mission of improving customer service in Miami-Dade County.