Friendly Bureau

The local self-government of Sopot for many years has consistently pursued its policy aimed at streamlining the operation of local administration, particularly the town hall. Therefore, as part of the "friendly bureau" program, a decisive action was taken in several areas.

Firstly, employing state-of-the-art data communication solutions to establish an effective link with our citizens and to enable them to handle all administrative issues electronically. Last May we created the Official Sopot Town Portal (available at www.sopot.pl) including a link called "e-community". All necessary procedures were listed there, with details on how and where different formalities may be handled, including forms ready to complete and e-mail to corresponding administrative units. Recently, we have also begun working on the implementation of the electronic signature in our town administration. Also, in the near future we will initiate a telephone/web information Contact Center, where operators will provide information and assistance on handling all formalities and administrative issues from 7AM through 8PM.

Secondly, in order to use modern management tools to improve the operation and organization of the town hall, the Sopot Town Council decided in 1998 to implement the quality management system in the town hall. The measures taken have lead to the Sopot town hall being awarded two certificates in September 1999, which confirm the compliance of the system implemented with the ISO-9002 standard.

Thirdly, for many years now special attention has been paid to raising qualifications of the town hall staff. In addition to such self-evident measures as sending employees to various training sessions, seminars or conferences, a higher education co-finance program is also pursued as an efficient incentive to maximize efforts and gain prospects of promotion.

Moreover, for two years now the staff and managers of organizational units have been studying social skills, social sciences and the psychology of work in order to improve customer care inasmuch as possible. The solutions described hereinabove are mere examples of actions taken by one self-government with a view to improving the local community management and quality of services provided to citizens. However, the fact that Sopot - for the fourth time in a row - was selected the town with greatest potential for development in Poland in an annual ranking conducted by the Center for Regional Studies is probably also somehow due to the above activities.