BackBritish Colombia's Ombudsperson Jay Chalke released Special Report No. 40, Holding Pattern: Call Wait Times for Income and Disability Assistance on April 17, 2018. Holding Pattern is the report of the Ombudsperson’s systemic investigation into the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction’s centralized telephone system and its impact on the applicants and recipients of income and disability assistance.
“The ministry’s telephone-based service has been chronically slow for a number of years,” said British Colombia Ombudsperson Jay Chalke. “Income and disability assistance applicants and recipients include some of the most vulnerable people in the province. The ministry needs to ensure its services are timely and meet the needs of the people it serves."
The Ombudsperson initiated the systemic investigation in July 2017 in response to a range of complaints about long wait times, disconnected calls, call time limits, and other challenges recipients of income and disability assistance face in communicating with the ministry by telephone.
This investigation resulted in nine recommendations for the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. The ministry has fully accepted six of the Ombudsperson’s nine recommendations and partially accepted the other three. The ministry outlined their rationale for doing so in their letter to the Ombudsperson, which is included as an appendix to Holding Pattern.
“I am pleased that the ministry has accepted our recommendations about publicly posting its wait times, which means that ministry clients and stakeholders will be able to follow the ministry’s progress in addressing this problem. I am also pleased the ministry is phasing out some of the limited service techniques it applied to shorten call answer wait times, but that resulted in reduced service quality,” added Chalke. “However, I am disappointed the ministry has not agreed to the timeliness service standards I recommended, preferring to substitute a different standard. Overall, their commitments are a good start, but more will need to be done.”
The Office of the Ombudsperson will monitor the progress of the ministry’s implementation of the recommendations and report publicly.
Source: British Colombia Ombudsperson, Canada
