Page 3833 - Week 12 - Thursday, 30 October 2014
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Over the past year, several enhancements to the territory’s public information emergency response have been made as part of the ACT government’s continuous improvement of this important public service.
Canberra Connect’s physical capacity has expanded. Over the years several different sites have been used as alternative locations for the Canberra Connect contact centre to operate from, including the Dickson motor vehicle registry, the Ron Reynolds centre in Curtin and Callam Offices in Phillip. All alternative locations for operations required more than a week’s notice to set up, as equipment had to be transported. The ability to secure access to these sites at short notice was limited. TAMS has this year now established an alternative operating site for the Canberra Connect contact centre co-located at the Canberra Connect Belconnen shopfront in Swanson Plaza. The room has been equipped with eight workstations and has been successfully used since April 2014 when needed. TAMS is also undertaking work this financial year to permanently establish the Ron Reynolds centre in Curtin for the same purpose.
The government’s call handling responsiveness has also improved. Shared Services ICT has optimised and redistributed the 200 ports that are used to manage Canberra Connect’s phone capacity so that call queue management is more effective and efficient, allowing a higher number of inbound calls to be answered. Prior to the project, the 13 22 81 phone line and the 132 500 State Emergency Service phone line both had a limit of 64 calls in queue.
The project has optimised the total number of calls in queue so that up to 181 calls in queue can be accommodated, providing a better service to the community. If the SES queue capacity is reached, customers now also hear a message play rather than a busy signal as they previously did. The busy signal could be mistaken by the caller as a line fault and cause further concern in an already stressful situation. The SES message helps to better respond to community expectations by advising the caller they have called at a time of very high call volumes and to try again in a few minutes or to call 000 if their situation is life threatening.
Canberra Connect has continued to successfully test its escalation arrangements under the national emergency call centre surge capability. This is a bilateral agreement between each state and territory jurisdiction and the commonwealth that was established at a Council of Australian Governments meeting in April 2009.
In the event of an emergency that exceeds or is anticipated to exceed the ACT’s capacity where the event is of territory significance, the ACT can request the commonwealth’s assistance in call handling. The agreement allows for the overflow of calls from local services, such as Canberra Connect, to commonwealth agency call centres such as those managed by the Department of Human Services, in the event of a state emergency.
To date the ACT has not required this service; however, other states have used it. For example, the Queensland state government activated the arrangement during the flood emergency a couple of years ago when Brisbane through to north Queensland was declared a natural disaster zone and several people lost their lives.
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