Process Overview

Arizona Citizen Voice proposes a bill that would require Arizona counties to receive citizen concerns and provide feedback regardless of the outcome. If passed, the bill would be implemented by a process to ensure consistency. There are three fundamental steps to the process, which are as follows:

• Citizen Complaints
• Compliance Reviews
• Corrective Action Plans

Process Purpose

The process seeks to hold Arizona counties accountable to its citizens. Arizona citizen can easily submit a governance concern to their county officials and receive timely feedback and a description of corrective actions taken or to be taken, if applicable.

Implementation Diagram

Citizen Complaints

As used in this context, Citizen Complaints are directed at the County and request resolution to a governance concern. Poor governance may be the result of incorrect decisions or improper actions taken by the county or even the lack of a decision or action.

Citizen Complaints are submitted into a process, where the complaint will be tracked from initiation until closure. Citizens and county employees will be able to determine the status of their complaint because they will be tracked in a database.

Citizen Complaints would normally be completed online via the county's website. However, alternate methods of submitting a complaint (e.g., U.S. Postal Service) should also be available to accommodate public needs. The website for submitting citizen complaints should be easy to find.

Instructions should guide the citizen through the steps necessary to submit a complaint worthy of County's time. Incomplete or meaningless complaints may be closed if the violation, deviation, or discrepancy is not clearly stated.

The citizen will be informed when their complaint was closed without any county action and an explanation provided for the closure.

The expected outcome of the Citizen's Complaint is a completed form with a tracking number.

Compliance Review

A Compliance Review is preformed to validate the Citizens Complaint, which is necessary to allow the county's to manage their resources.

No citizen action is required to perform the Compliance Review. However, county employees performing the compliance review may contact the citizen for the purpose of clarifying information that is not understood by those performing the Compliance Review.

The Compliance Review is performed by an individual or persons with sufficient knowledge of the subject to determine if the Citizen's Complain reasonably identifies a violation, deviation or discrepancy, which requires attention by the county staff. The burden of proof does not rest upon the citizen

A decision is the fundamental outcome of the Compliance Review, the Citizen's Complaint may be closed with no further action OR if the complaint requires additional attention by the county.

If the Compliance Review determines there is no violation, deviation or deficiency, the Compliance Review's finding should be documented, explanation communicated to the citizen, and the complaint then closed.

If the Compliance Review determines additional attention to the Citizen's Complaint is necessary, the complaint will be assigned to an individual that will be responsible for the investigation of the complaint and creation of the Corrective Action Plan.

Corrective Action Plan

Corrective Action Plan (CAP) may be used to describe several process steps OR a specific process step.

CAP as a process consists of the following steps:

1. Determine the Cause - Investigate the condition to identify why the problem occurred.
2. Develop a CAP - The Corrective Action Plan consists of the following attributes:
   1. State the Cause - Why did the condition occur
   2. State the planned fix - What will be done to address the condtion
   3. Assign Ownership - Who will be responsible for implementing the fix
   4. Implement the Actions- Implement changes as described on the planned fix.
3. Verify Completion - Ensure all planned actions have been implemented.
4. Verify Effectiveness - Ensure the fix achieves its intended purpose.
5. Monitor, When Appropriate - For significant issues, monitor the process for a period of time to make sure the problem does not recur.
6. Close the matter - Document the results, close the CAP and the original concern, and communicate the outcome to the citizen.