Ilsur Metshin: “People address because they are sure that they won’t be let down”

(KZN.RU, September 28, Ksenia Shvetsova). This year, the system “Open Kazan” served more than 2 million applications. The system has been helping Kazan citizens to resolve issues in the sphere of housing and communal services for over 7 years. Daily it receives about a thousand applications, which are processed and closed for a maximum of 24 hours. Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of the city, got acquainted with the process and the main results of the work of the system “Open Kazan”. He inspected the premises on Karl Marks Street, where dispatchers work, and noted that once the citizens reluctantly got used to the new service. But today, it became an indispensable tool for improving the housing and communal services sector.

Bogdan Ababkov, the head of the State Projects Department of the Group of Companies “FIX”, said that over 7 years, it was possible to create a single field in all areas of housing and communal services. The continuous improvement of the system and the introduction of new technologies make it more convenient for citizens every year. Thus, today Kazan can turn to “Open Kazan” through a call center, portal, or application, which is planned to be modernized this year and made more modern. Most of the Kazan management companies, urban contractors and resource-supply companies are connected to the system through their personal office. All applications related to the housing and communal services coming to the “People's Control” are also redirected to the “Open Kazan”.

Today, the “Open Kazan” serves more than 5 thousand apartment buildings, it is 87% of the housing stock. The system employs more than 40 management companies, 277 contract organizations, and 6 resource-supplying and other enterprises. According to B. Ababkov, they also begin to join the service. For example, the OOO “UK “Kazan-XXI-Vek” joined the system on their own initiative.

“We process about a thousand applications a day, and there are 3 thousand at the time of starting the heat. In August, we passed the mark of 2 million applications. And if at the beginning in 2011, these were mostly complaints, today it is specific tasks. These can be suggestions for improving the local area, power supply. We see this as a positive trend”, said Bogdan Ababkov.

The Mayor agreed with this opinion and noted that the number of appeals with specific proposals indicates that people trust the service. “People address because they are sure that there will be an answer, a solution to the problem, they won’t be let down. The most important thing is the result”.

The service is used not only for dispatching the process, but also allows focusing on the most problematic issues in the area of utilities and solve them as soon as possible. Iskander Giniyatullin, the deputy head of the Executive Committee, added that the citizens can send wishes through the system that are reviewed weekly at the headquarters in the Committee for Housing and Communal Services.

The most popular categories of calls to date are the power supply, malfunction of water supply networks, and improvement of adjacent areas. Since the start of the work, the growth in the number of applications has been registered to 99%, the response time to problems has decreased by 3.5 times. If in 2011, the response time from the application to the moment of its actual execution was approximately 60 hours, today it takes no more than a day. The answer for emergency calls comes within half an hour. “These are very impressive figures. Real people, real problems are behind it. There is still something to strive for, but the road has already been passed a lot, for which we are grateful to you and the management companies”, said I. Metshin.

The Mayor asked why the number of applications to some of the city's management companies is much ahead of others. I. Giniyatullin explained that it is connected with positive changes. “On the one hand, it says that there are problems, on the other hand, there is feedback and the residents trust the management company, the system and communicate with it more actively. There is a problem in the Moskovsky district with the quality of electricity supply, some distortions in the electrician, and there are many applications for burnt out bulbs. But at the same time, a large number of applications and proposals for improvement comes from there”.

The Moskovsky district was the first district of the city, where the project started in 2011. “We remember the resistance at first, and today it is the main tool in the work of housing and communal services structures. Everything new is hard to take root, but it's good that we insisted. Today the results of the service speak for themselves”, said I. Metshin. Also, the head of the city inspected the premises, in which dispatchers accept applications. There are 14 working places in the call center.

Kazan has become one of the first cities to introduce a system of quick response to problems in the housing and communal services sector. Today its experience is actively adopted by other cities in the republic and abroad. Similar services have been introduced in Nizhnekamsk, Almetyevsk, Yelabuga, Zainsk, the Republic of Komi, the city of Chechnya, and Nizhny Novgorod has joined this year.