One-Stop-Shops and First-Stop-Shops

One-stop-shops and first-stop-shops are a high-priority instrument of economic promotion at the local level. They are supposed to reduce companies' transaction costs in dealing with government.

• One-stop-shops consolidate a broad variety of government contact points into one organization.
  

• First-stop-shops provide companies with information regarding the government agency they have to deal with to solve their specific problem, and possibly mediate the interaction process.

These shops address two different types of interaction between business and government: interaction where a business is a subject (or possibly an infractor), and interaction where business is a customer. Businesses are subjects with respect to wide variety of government rules and regulations, from taxes to building permits to environmental licensing and health control. Businesses are customers of government agencies which are in charge of business promotion. The following table summarizes the different types of organizational arrangements and types of interaction.

 

	Interaction with government agencies	Business promotion
First - Stop - Shop	Providing companies with information about agencies (and possibly the procedures involved in dealing with them) in areas such as company registration building permits and transport issues labor registration and related issues environmental regulations	Providing companies with information about agencies (and possibly the procedures involved in dealing with them) in areas such as SME support programs export promotion programs training programs business upgrading programs R+D promotion programs fiscal incentives and subsidies
One - Stop - Shop	Creating a point of contact where a business can deal with the various agencies mentioned above under one roof, or it even interacts with only one person which serves as an intermediary with all these agencies	Creating a point of contact where a business can deal with advisors specialized in identifying the appropriate support program to assist the company in solving its specific problem

It is important to point out that, apart from first-stop- and one-stop-shops, there is also what one might ironically call "never-stop museums" or "rarely-stop business entertainment centers". It is not rare to find that business- or SME-promotion organizations run a network of shops which are supposed to be one-stop-shops for business promotion (rarely if ever for interaction with government agencies), but which effectively are only offering generic, often outdated information which does little to help a company in solving its acute problem.

An interesting example of how to deal with this problem is provided by Scottish Enterprise (SE), the comprehensive business- and employment-promotion agency which serves the largest part of Scottish business. As part of an organizational transformation process, SE realized that its one-stop-shops were really never-stop-shops. With the reorganization, SE established the "Small Business Gateway" as a new type of one-stop- and first-stop-agency. The Business Gateway is not just a place, a building where businesspeople can interact with SE, even though it has been established that all external contact of SE has to go through the Business Gateway, as opposed being fragmented between a huge number of departments and programs. Moreover, the Business Gateway includes an integrated data-base which tracks every interaction SE has with a given company, so that there are no more fragmented patterns of interaction between the organization and the company. Apart from this, the Business Gateway serves as a first-stop agency for businesses' interaction with other government agencies.

next chapter: making government more responsive to businesses' needs: the example of NRW's MOVE initiative

back to: new organizational arrangements in local/regional economic  and employment promotion

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