A need for a unified hotline service

Residents and foreigners who live in Shanghai can dial a new unified hotline 12345 if they need help concerning public services or have suggestions about the city's management.

This new hotline combines some 230 hotlines that were operated by district governments and bureaus in recent years. The 460 operators working on two shifts will answer enquiries from locals and forward their problems to relevant departments if they can't solve the problem themselves.

The trial period, from 8 am to 8 pm everyday, might last for several months until next year when the authorities plan to launch it officially. It will be extended to 24-hour support when people become more familiar with it.

The existing hotlines will be gradually phased out. But for emergencies, people will still have to call 110 for police, 119 for firefighters and 120 for ambulances.

Multiple language services are also provided. The office in charge of the new hotline has recruited many university students as volunteers. Authorities believe this new hotline will enhance communication between the public and the authorities.

It is good news that finally all we have to remember is one hotline number. There is no doubt that a unified hotline will be more convenient for residents and, at the same time, will save money and labor for the authorities.

But its effectiveness still needs to be proven. A consulting company did a survey earlier this year in which it reported that 20 percent of public hotlines in Shanghai, Beijing and other 23 provinces and cities are impossible to get through to, while one-third of them takes more than 20 seconds to get someone to talk to you.

I have seldom heard of my relatives, friends and colleagues calling such hotlines. On the one hand, it's complicated to remember so many numbers and link them to special departments. On the other hand, we can't be sure if it actually works.

Once I called the public hotline 12333 of the Shanghai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau to consult social welfare. The operator didn't give me a satisfactory answer and redirected me to district social welfare offices instead.

It is necessary for the operator to know as much information collected from different departments as possible. If there is any change of information inside a particular department, the hotline office should be informed of it immediately. It is important to ensure that the information flows fast between the hotline office and different authorities.

Besides, when operators can't find an answer in their information pool for callers' enquiries, is there a channel to forward the question directly to the particular department or officer who can solve it? And how much time will it take to respond to the caller? The government has to establish a mechanism to supervise the whole process.

According to the Shanghai Morning Post, the new hotline received around 5,000 calls on the first trial day, 95.11 percent of which were answered, half of which for consultancy and 13 percent for complaints. And another media outlet found that people had to wait 4 minutes to talk to an operator in English on the first trial day.