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Conclusions: <br />■ 1 was asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the Request Partners system after 2007 to <br />determine its cost effectiveness. We presently pay $400 per month. This would be <br />reduced to half if we brought the software in-house on our server. We had a 2 year <br />contract which expired in March 2007. <br />■ Request Partners was put online in August of 2005. The goal for the software was: <br />o to reduce the amount of time staff spent on the phone taking service <br />requests, and <br />o to have a tracking mechanism for accountability of service delivery. <br />■ Despite promoting the program on the webpage, in newsletters, in news releases, on <br />cable TV, at Town Hall meetings and Neighborhood Meetings, the program has not <br />shown significant growth. <br />■ Numbers from the first year showed that 415 service requests were made. It was <br />determined that over half of those were put into the system by staff rather than by <br />residents online. <br />In all of 2007, only 128 requests came into the system from online. It is hard to tell <br />how many of those were entered by staff after receiving a call from a citizen. <br />■ Public Works who registered 50% of all service requests entered most of them via <br />citizen calls. They stopped using the Request Partners system in 2007 because <br />efficiency was better using the Access database that they developed internally. <br />■ The City presently has a system on the New Brighton Webpage that allows citizens to <br />"contact us" via an email system with a request or comment. <br />■ Perhaps because of the age of the City and the demographics of our residents, going <br />online to request a service does not appear to be the preferred way to do business. <br />Citizens just appear to be more comfortable making a phone call. <br />