citizen office
Citizens ' offices (also citizen offices , citizen services or citizen services ) are institutions of local government in which public-intensive services for citizens are brought together in one place. In (smaller) municipalities, several or all of these services are (or were) combined in the town hall or a central building of the municipal administration.
The first such offices came into being in the 1980s (e.g. Unna , Bielefeld ) and were set up to a large extent in the 1990s. The aim of these facilities is to make administration more efficient and customer-oriented. The concept includes numerous urban services under one roof, as close to home as possible, with extended opening times and short waiting times. The range of tasks ranges from processing ID cards and passports to housing benefits to pensions, residents' parking permits, bulky waste cards and garbage bags. In more extensive forms, either applications for all important tasks of the municipal administration are checked in advance or all social, youth and housing policy tasks of a municipality are offered in a decentralized manner (social citizenship center or office in large cities, e.g. Munich ). The administrations are increasingly trying to achieve the same function through new information technologies and online communication or call centers .
The employees have other forms of work (flexitime, open-plan offices) and their work in citizens' offices is associated with both enrichment and, in some cases, higher workloads. According to a survey by the German Association of Cities in 1999 on the subject of citizenship offices, almost every second city that belongs to the Association of Cities has set up a citizenship office. The bigger a city is, the more likely it is to offer citizenship offices. 12 out of 14 large cities with more than 400,000 inhabitants have a citizenship office, 18 out of 24 cities with 200,000 to 400,000 inhabitants, and 27 of the 39 cities with 100,000 to 200,000 inhabitants.
Citizen-oriented services are also increasingly being offered on service portals. These enable electronic communication, interaction and transactions between citizens and the administration. There are different functionalities and levels. The basis are responsibility finders that enable organizations or services to be identified. The provision of a central platform, customer orientation and electronic transactions lead to one-stop-shop (one-stop government).