Improvement of Office Work

We are working on unifying service counters (provision of one stop administrative services), which are the first contact point to citizens, in order to make the counter services easier to understand. In 1999, the service counters in the welfare sector were put together and at the same the counter height was lowered. This was to establish an environment that makes it easy to find out where to go for advice and to consult in a relaxed atmosphere.  We are working to integrate the counters for tax payers as well.
Moreover, city employees' name tags have been made larger. Larger name tags make it easier to check the name and affiliation of city employees. At the same time uniforms have been abolished, which resulted significantly reduced costs. 

In order to reduce the amount of waste and promote recycling, we have introduced a charge for bulky waste collection and a system that requires the use of city designated garbage bags for the collection of burnable and non-burnable garbage. For the reduction of environmental impact on a global scale, the Clean Center received ISO14001 certification, which is the first certification granted to a garbage disposal facility, and the City Government building and other sites (facilities) followed suit and received the certification in March 2002. 
Moreover, the lights are turned off during lunch break in the departments and divisions that do not have service counters and the air conditioners are set at higher temperatures during the summer for cost reduction and increased environmental friendliness.

We are making internal improvements for an efficient administrative management, including increase in the utilization rate of office vehicles based on centralized management, promotion of the use of bicycles by city employees, computerization of family register-related office work, and construction of intra-city government LAN. 
Moreover, we have introduced an expert staff system to employ persons with business experience in private companies as part-time special services workers to provide advice on city administration from a professional viewpoint to help improve office work and solve complex problems.

Simply put, it is an administrative operation and management system for improving citizen satisfaction. It is a system for achieving organizational targets, in which strategies for achieving the above targets are developed and specific activities that follow the above strategies are systematically correlated. Achievement indexes derived from multifaceted viewpoints, including the "financial viewpoint," "work process viewpoint, "citizen satisfaction viewpoint," and "human resource development and usage viewpoint," are used to develop the strategies. Naturally, the financial performance remains an important objective, but the strategies will be developed, focusing more on the multifaceted non-financial performance up to the achievement of positive financial results.
 
What is the balance in the concept of the balance score card (BSC)?
The BSC uses four viewpoints: "1. financial viewpoint," "2. work process viewpoint," "3. citizen satisfaction viewpoint," and "4. human resource development and usage viewpoint." The focus is not on achieving a balance between the above viewpoints but on establishing a complementary relationship between them. Achieving a balance in terms of BSC is to comprehensively assess items such as: 1. short-term and long-term objectives; 2. financial and non-financial evaluations; 3. past performance and future targets; and 4. internal and external viewpoints for management optimization.
 
The BSC is for the improvement of citizen satisfaction
The purpose of a private company is to maximize profit and redistribute it to shareholders. Therefore, the first priority is the "financial viewpoint" among the four viewpoints of the BSC. The purpose of an autonomous community, however, is public welfare and the first priority is the "citizen satisfaction viewpoint," and the "financial viewpoint" is seen more as a limiting factor. From the multiple viewpoints of the "work process viewpoint" and the "human resource development and usage viewpoint," we promote management of an autonomous community that enables sustainable development for the future and work toward improving citizen satisfaction, which has not been achieved from the financial viewpoint only. 

Workflow is a depiction of a sequence of "projects" and "work" that can be classified based on purposes, object persons, and units of performance with the "activity" and the "work" of employees used as units.
The workflow of Ichikawa City is two-tiered, consisting of an "activity flow," in which major "activities" that are the components of the flow are shown in a time series on the horizontal axis, and a "workflow," in which the flow of pieces of "work" that are the components of the "activities" are shown on the vertical axis. Bottlenecks that hinder the flow are improved and regular and exceptional treatments are properly separated based on the analysis of the workflow in order to optimize the process to speed up services and reduce costs. Workflow has been introduced in every division of Ichikawa City Government since Fiscal 2003.

ABC (activity-based costing) is to allocate various costs to each "activity" individualized in a workflow so as to visualize the cost structure. Cost is seen in the form of total cost including project budget, personnel cost, depreciation cost, utility and water costs, and clerical cost. Moreover, the structure of internal cost such as the how the management resources that have been collectively grasped in the administrative division of the main office are affecting the performance of the sales and promotional divisions and the amount of total cost per customer and per product are made clear. It is expected that it will enable the 1. understanding of activities that are putting pressure on corporate profit, 2. efficient use of outsourcing, and 3. consistent control of management resources between the head and branch offices.
Features of the ABC implemented in Ichikawa City
Commonly-used ABC (activity-based costing) makes it possible to obtain the results of an extremely detailed analysis, but on the other hand, requires a huge amount of cost and time for the analysis itself. Therefore, there is a possibility that analysis is conducted for analysis' sake. Moreover, there is still another possibility that making efforts in everything does not necessarily lead to satisfactory results in a situation where a variety of usages and effects are expected. Therefore, Ichikawa City made the analysis, focusing only on the city government employees' activities with higher flexibility for improvement. We implement a sort of "Ichikawa Version ABC," as a method of achieving the maximum effect with low cost of analysis. For the viewpoint of analysis, we start by categorzing the quality of respective activities. Costs are divided into the cost of city employees' activities whose amount directly affects services to citizens, cost of internal management work whose amount does not directly affect them, and indirect cost and the appropriateness of the relative importance of the costs are assessed. Management resources (human resources) created by streamlining and improved efficiency of office work are intensively allocated to activities directly related to services to citizens (shifting of resources). "Ichikawa Version ABC" is not aimed at reduction in the amount. It is for creating management resources not only by inputting the project budget but also through internal improvement for improving services to citizens. Moreover, it is for the shifting of awareness of administrative management from a business managerial viewpoint.

Ichikawa City is currently making efforts in BSC and ABC, which are two of the most popular themes in the consulting services targeted at autonomous communities. It is important, however, that city employees who have a good knowledge of work make their own efforts in order to achieve significant results in improving office work. Moreover, it is necessary to tailor the analysis method to suit the organizational culture of Ichikawa City rather than applying the method strictly according to the textbook. Making efforts in the above manner will motivate employees to succeed and lead to the increased awareness of administrative management from a business managerial viewpoint.