The Maryland Department of Planning collaborates with state agencies, local governments, and the private sector to provide assistance and data so each community can shape their future in a way that reflects local values, honors its heritage, and presents opportunities for all of Maryland to flourish. The department facilitates coordination of planning efforts statewide and helps to ensure that government actions support appropriate private sector investment. The department provides essential data analysis and information for the state, and also plays an important role in preserving Maryland’s heritage and conserving its natural resources.

Our customers are all citizens, businesses, or government entities that seek information or assistance regarding planning, conserving, or improving their community in Maryland. Our customers are representatives at state agency partners, staff and officials from county and municipal governments, state employees, as well as the general public.

The Maryland Historical Trust also works with sister state agencies and local governments. The Trust responds to a Board, interfaces with federal staff, and serves organizations and citizens with various initiatives like the tax credit program. The Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum (JPPM) serves the general public and organizations that utilize the park, visit the museum, and rent facilities. JPPM also hosts school children and families for educational programming. The Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab at JPPM serves customers that include counties, sister state agencies, universities, and other organizations such as the United States Navy, who have conservation, restoration, and preservation requirements.

The Department of Planning’s commitment to the Customer Service Promise describes our approach. Customer Service activities include:

1. Improve the tracking, responsiveness, and time-to-resolution of all electronic, telephone, written, and in-person correspondence.
2. Ensure state employees and managers continue to improve customer service skills through formal training classes and informal coaching on best practices in customer service.
3. Improve the processing times of agency services to help citizens and businesses accomplish their transactions with the state.
4. Increase the number of services the state provides online so that citizens and businesses can utilize self-service, as appropriate. For example, we have made our most popular products available online and continue to receive significant downloads of our MdProperty View (9,400 downloads); Parcel Viewer (133,802 downloads); FINDER Quantum (2,200 downloads) and FINDER Online (56,635 downloads). We track these downloads on a monthly basis and we are able to monitor any decrease in their use by the public.
5. Update online publications, forms, FAQs, and pertinent information on our website so that citizens and businesses can find relevant information quickly and accurately. For example, we update all of the property mapping data for every county in Maryland on a regular basis to provide data to the Department of Assessments and Taxation and all who use our mapping products.

6. Use social media to help get the word out about services, events, and news to provide citizens and businesses with information important to them. We have established Planning Practice Wednesday as an electronic newsletter to share success stories and best practices throughout the state.

In addition to these core customer service-related activities, we will also analyze our business hours in order to better align them to customer needs, ensure literature is up-to-date, and conduct staff meetings to discuss progress on achieving customer service goals. We will also continue to recognize top performers in our agency for professionalism and courtesy, responsiveness in resolving a customer’s needs, and for innovations that improve customer service.

We will monitor the execution of the aforementioned activities, measure performance, and analyze the results in order to continuously improve customer service.

We are committed to providing Maryland citizens, businesses, stakeholders, and other customers with the best customer service.

Click here for our three question customer experience survey.​