In Knowsley telephones have played an integral part in the development of the council's one-stop-shop service since 1994; in Brent a relaunched call centre is a key ingredient in its aim to offer 24-hour council services and the new Liverpool Direct number expects to receive more than 4m calls a year.
It may be the internet and web technology that grabs all the prominent headlines, but in the end it is likely to be a simple phone call to your local council that will matter most when it comes to connecting the drive for improved public services with the people who use them.
Call centres are already changing the way some local authorities work, and are likely to figure prominently in the way many more respond to pressures to change the way they deliver services to their communities.
Tony Blair and the Cabinet Office may be promoting a target of 2005 for all public services to be available online or electronically. But as a series of recent reports have shown, the closer you are to the day to day problems of actual service delivery, the more real the obstacles are.
Most councils have websites and encourage greater use of email as a means of communication, but as the IT Trends 2000/1 report published by the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) acknowledges, there is still only a "patchy or poor understanding" about how best to use the technology.
In contrast to this uncertainty, Socitm found: "There is considerable interest in call centre technology and customer relationship management. Very few authorities have a call centre at present but 63% said they expect to introduce one over the next year or so."
The great advantage of the telephone is its widespread availability and relative ease of use, the lack of major skill barriers and its availability to a greater cross section of people from all ages and social-economic class.
However rapid the growth of the internet, the telephone is already in more than 90% of all homes and what the Henley Centre dubbed "teleculture" is a fact of life for councils. According to the Foundation for Information Technology in Local Government, councils already conduct "75% or more of their existing contact with citizens via the phone".
Public confidence
BT published a study this summer which showed widespread concern that lack of public access to the internet could pose a major barrier to the delivery of e-services and could even exasperate problems of social exclusion.
Concerns about a general lack of information technology skills and low levels of the public's confidence in their ability to use new technology were also identified as major problems.
The plain fact is, the older you are, the less likely you are to use a touchscreen, interactive television or personal computer to access information, but the more likely you are to feel comfortable using a telephone. Even in this high tech age, it seems people still value the opportunity of talking to other people when they want to find something out.
This was also a point made in an "Embracing Technology" study by the online bank Egg and research company Mori, which stressed that even though half the population may soon be using the internet regularly there will still be 29m adults who don't use a PC. A hardcore of 9m vow they never will.
For local government these issues have a special resonance in the era of best value, in which councils are charged with securing year-on-year service improvements. Information technology, put to good effect, can offer a solution to transforming service delivery.
Since taking up the post of chief executive at Liverpool, David Henshaw has systematically set about transforming the council from " seaport to e-port" - from near the bottom in national performance standards to the very top.
A former chief executive of Knowsley, where he helped pioneer the development of one stop shops, Mr Henshaw has forged a £500m partnership deal with BT to establish Liverpool Direct, the biggest consumer contact centre in local government.
Liverpool Direct already takes some 25,000 calls a week from the public and by early next year, as the local network of one stop centres expands, it expects to deal with more than 100,000 calls a week.
Local people will be able to access council services by telephone and through a range of newer technologies from touchscreens, digital and web television, WAP phones and the internet, but the guiding principle is to integrate both technology and services to make the council more open and customer friendly.
"Instead of separate council departments all working independently in self-protective silos of service and information, we are integrating our approach right across the council," says Mr Henshaw who emphasises the longer term aim of making the service "more pro-active, more response and more relevant" for the people who use it.
Working conditions
With some 7,000 call centres employing more than 400,000 people throughout the UK, the sector plays a key role for the private sector, which pioneered much of the early development through the rapid growth of online insurance and financial services.
Despite attracting more than their fair share of criticism for being the "sweatshops" of a new industrial age, call centres have had to respond positively to problems such as high levels of absenteeism, high staff turnover and complaints about stress and poor working conditions.
It is a lesson that has not been lost on local authorities, which have recognised the importance of improved staff training and development. As Anne Marie Stagg from the Call Centre Management Association, explains: "Achieving customer services excellence is very simple. All you do is give your frontline people freedom to do what they feel is in the best interests of their customers and then train them, encourage them and support them in excercising this freedom.
"Delivering dreadful customer services is often a result of managerial interference and a tendency to restrict frontline people from applying common sense. Staff who value themselves and who are valued by their bosses, will value their customers."
