See II.2.4

At present, citizens, associations, enterprises,... within the local authorities Haaltert, Arendonk and Herenthout only contact the local government by telephone or e-mail to make an appointment with a certain service. A major disadvantage here is that citizens only have the opportunity to make an appointment during office hours. An online appointment module could offer great added value for this process.

It improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the appointment process because in this way the citizen is able to make an appointment in a few clicks at any place and with any device at any time of the day. The duration to make an appointment will therefore be much shorter in the future. The citizen will also be able to immediately see for each product which moments are still available to make an appointment and thus book the most suitable moment for him. He will also be able to change his appointment himself. In addition, the number of manual interventions by employees will be significantly reduced because far fewer telephones and e-mails will be processed and the available time of colleagues will be optimally used by a clear corresponding planning tool.

In addition to implementing an appointment module and the associated customer guidance system, we also want to focus on digital appointments via Teams, Zoom at a later stage of this process,... In this way, we offer citizens the opportunity to have an appointment take place remotely. We foresee a great time saving for the citizen here as he will no longer have to move to the town hall.

In addition to the specific criteria for the focus 'innovative services', there are a few general criteria that we would like to discuss in more detail below. When choosing the appropriate tool, user-friendliness will be paramount. We not only want to focus on a user-friendly online appointment module, but also want to use a customer guidance system on site. We see a customer column in the entrance hall of the town hall as a central point of contact for the citizen. On the basis of a limited number of questions, the citizen will soon find out how he can be helped further. Every citizen will be able to work with it due to the ease of use of the column. As a result, we reach a very large part of the population, which we believe is a great added value within this project.

A direct consequence of using this online appointment module is that our reception staff will have to answer far fewer phones and process e-mails to record appointments. This time saving directly results in a better physical reception of citizens.

Every digitization process has a number of success factors. This also applies to the implementation of an appointment module and customer guidance system. That is why it is important to draw up a solid project plan in which all the different phases and their end result are described. Only in this way will the feasibility of the proposal be mapped out. It goes without saying that this project plan can still change before the actual start of the project.

In order to use the appointment module as efficiently as possible, a link with My Citizen Profile when choosing the software is an element that will be assessed. A link between the appointment module and the Office365 packages used are also an added value. In the first instance, we think of the link with Outlook calendars and the digital continuation of an appointment via Teams.