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The HAMMER AWARD was developed by the Vice President to recognize Federal employees who have "reinvented" their part of the governmebnt by significantly changing the way they do business in order to provide better service to citizens. It is rare for this award to be presented to a non-government recipient.
In October 1995, Vice President Gore requested an NPR initiative to make it easier for customers to do business with the government by improving the way Government services were listed in telephone directories throughout the nation. As a result, Ameritech officials partnered with the Federal Government's General Services Administration (GSA) to redesign the Federal Government listings that appear in the Indianapolis and Chicago area Ameritech directories.
The 1996-97 directory, which was distributed to Indianapolis area homes and businesses in October, is the first Ameritech directory to contain the revised listings. The Chicago directories containing the revisions will be delivered to customers in January. Users of these revised directories can now find more detailed information about governmental agencies, including office hours, E-mail addresses, Internet addresses, Websites, 800 numbers and fax numbers. In the future, Ameritech plans to include more graphics and typefaces in the Government pages of all directories to make the listings easier to read.
Indianapolis area customers use the Government pages approximately 993,000 times a year looking for information. Recent national surveys said that 19 percent of consumers indicate they have had difficulty in locating the appropriate Government listing. Research also indicates that 25 percent of the citizens give up since they get no response or cannot locate a particular office. The U.S. Government estimates that rerouting misdirected calls to the correct government agenices costs approximately $10 million per year.
Kent Lebherz, president of Ameritech Indiana, accepted the HAMMER AWARD today during a presentation at Ameritech's Indiana headquarters in Indianapolis. "Whether consumers are looking for the Consumer Product Safety Commission hotline, reverse mortgage informaiton or details about the Foster Grandparent program, they will find it in the new, revised Federal Government Listings in our Ameritech PagesPlus (R) White or Blue Pages directories. The customer is the winner in this joing effort," Lebherz said.
Ron Piasecki, Federal Telecommunications Service (FTS) Senior Exective Project Manager said, "Ameritech has taken the leadership role with regards to dramatic and innovative approaches to reengineering both the process and actual content of the Federal pages. They are the first telecommunications company to include e-mail and Website addresses in the Government pages. As a resykt if this partnership with Ameritech, we expect the nummber of misdirected calls to be dramatically reduced and for customers to have greater access to government services."
The 1996-97 Indianapolis Consumer and Suburban directories also are some of the first in the nation to feature Internet addresses. The Consumer (Yellow Pages) directory features a special two-page Internet Guide that explains the Internet. A world-wide leader in making communications easy, Ameritech (NYSE:AIT) serves millions of customers in 50 states and 40 countries. Ameritech provides a full range of communications services, including local and long distance telephone, cellular, paging, security monitoring, cable TV, electronic commerce, on-line services and more. One of the world's 100 largest companies, Ameritech (www.ameritech.com) has 66,000 employees, 1 million shareowners and $23 billion in assets.