So called ‘avoidable contact ‘is about about enabling citizens to self serve efficiently by finding out about key council service areas which typically involve a large volume of citizen and business transactions. These include:

• Highways (condition of roads, street lighting)
• Housing (benefit claims, council tax benefit, repairs, allocations and lettings process for social housing)
• Environmental Health services (licensing, food safety, pollution and pest control)
• Waste collection and street cleaning, including recycling, street furniture and fly-tipping
• General council tax enquiries, billing and recovery process for payment of council tax and national non-domestic rates
• Planning services (local planning issues) and building control
• Electoral register
• Parking permits and Parking Control Notices.

SOCITM says that ALL enquiries coming into a council through non-web channels for information and transactions that are available on the web should be regarded as 'avoidable contacts'. If a local authority can encourage more users to self serve and use their website rather than to use the phone or dropping in to a council office it will become more efficient and reduce its service delivery costs.

Published figures for typical transaction costs are £0.17p for a web transaction, £4.00 for a phone transaction and £7.81 for a face-to-face transaction (Source: NWEGG).

So how does iShare help? iShare enables citizens to self-serve without contacting the council and the My Alerts email service enables citizens to get direct email notifications to ensure that they are up to date with what is going on in their area. South Tyneside Council for example have hard statistics back up the reported efficiency gains through its use of iShare and My Alerts.