Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 13/02) - It's out with the old, in with the new blue.

The 2002 Northwest Territories phone book has a reorganized set of blue pages, arranged by category of service instead of by government department.

The change is part of a federal initiative to make government services more accessible.

Janet Pennington coordinated the data gathering for the new listings. She is the senior advisor for the planning division of the territorial public works and services department.

"Some programs were not being accessed because people didn't know they existed," she said. "Or people may have known a program existed but had no idea who delivered it, so they had no way to access it."

Not everyone is completely happy with the change, however.

Tim Mercer, city director of corporate services, said that many of the contact numbers listed for Yellowknife were in fact territorial numbers. For example, under "lottery licence" the new blue pages list a territorial government number under Yellowknife. But a person wishing to obtain a lottery licence in Yellowknife needs to contact the city.

"It's not very clear who people can contact or what contact numbers people can use to get the city," said Mercer.

The new directory lists government contacts under the service they deliver, such as "sewage," "elected officials" and "permits." Different levels of government are then indicated by an initial -- M for municipal, T for territorial, F for federal.

The federal government created a list of 750 keywords for different jurisdictions to use. Pennington parsed that list down to about 200 she thought would be useful in the NWT.

The final product contains 1,280 listings, and sees the Northwest Territories listings in the blue pages expand from 12 pages to 38.

Some numbers are still missing, however. For example, only Yellowknife and Inuvik are listed under "Mayor and council."

Existing holes should be filled in in subsequent years when governments submit new listings, said Pennington.

The GNWT will pay for focus groups to evaluate the new pages sometime this spring.