Administrative Responsibility

Commission role

The Commission will oversee program design and implementation. The Commission will also post announcements of this pilot on its web site.

Utility role

We nominate PG&E to administer this program, because we find their current online customer services already more advanced than those of the other utilities. We do not, however, recommend that PG&E develop this web site in-house. Instead, we recommend that PG&E take on the role of marketing the new site to a select group of customers. PG&E should also hire an independent web design consultant to develop the site. PG&E should hire an independent evaluation contractor to study customer reaction to the site and recommend changes and improvements before more widespread deployment of the strategy. We understand that several similar efforts have been ordered in various Commission decisions and that the utilities are already working on a joint statewide website. This effort is intended to be more robust and go beyond those activities.

Third party role

As discussed above, an independent web design contractor should develop and host the site linked from the PG&E main web site. Since the site will contain individual customer data, the web developer will likely be required to sign a confidentiality agreement to protect consumer usage data.

PG&E should hire a separate contractor to evaluate the program concept and customer reaction.