Pittsburgh beat us to the punch, but there’s no need for Dallas to be left out of the tech party. With our city’s budget cuts, anything we can do to make city services run more efficiently is welcome, especially when the City Manager has proposed cutting 311 from 24 hours/day to 7am-7pm daily.
Anyone who sees a code violation can snap a pic, upload, and be done with it, without having to (a) sit on hold with a 311 operator forever or (b) remember all the relevant location/violation info for later input into the 311 website (assuming you don’t forget).
And no more confusion about incorrect addresses (look at picture; compare to reality; done). Plus, the city’s got tangible evidence of an alleged violation and can evaluate the problem before going out to investigate.
I like this on lots of levels and will be asking our City Manager to investigate. But I want a Blackberry version, too.
Two years ago, the Council’s Public Safety Committee requested improvements to 311 and the Code Compliance Department. The Council’s Quality of Life Committee was briefed today on the status of those improvements.
There are some good benchmarks indicating positive changes: In 2004, the backlog of unassigned cases was 16,800. Today, that’s been reduced to 1,113. In 2003, the average time for complaints to be resolved was 64 days. Today, it’s 16 days, with only .1% overdue.
Part of the problem was also 311 input training. That’s been accomplished and is ongoing. A reconfiguration of the 311 system was also completed, allowing calltakers to give residents the estimated time the problem will be addressed and automating assignment of code complaints to code inspectors.
Other changes include providing a means to update residents on their complaints, conducting field audits to ensure inspectors are doing their jobs correctly, and working more closely with the City Attorney’s Office.
I would like your feedback. Do you see positive changes in 311 and Code Enforcement? Where do improvements still need to be made? Email me at angela@angelahunt.com
As part of the City’s new focus on improving customer service, the City Manager has put together a taskforce to determine how to improve the 911/311 system.
Right now, if you call 911 or 311, the same group of operators answers the call. The 911/311 system is currently under the authority of the Fire Department. The taskforce will look at organizational structure, training standards, and management issues, among other things.
The taskforce is being asked to address these issues expeditiously so that any suggested changes can be incorporated into the upcoming budget (our budget year runs from Oct. 2006 – Sept. 2007).
We had two agenda items today: COGNOS and the Citywide Trail program.
COGNOS is a computer program for manipulating city data, specifically 311 information. Data is not much use unless you can slice it and dice it and find patterns. COGNOS will allow us to really analyze 311 information. For example, we’ll be able to compare response times for different service requests, look at service requests by geographic area, and basically determine where the City needs to be improving. It’s going to be a very powerful tool, and will help us set goals for improvement. It will also give us concrete numbers to show residents whether the City is improving. Right now, staff is working with the Council to figure out exactly what types of reports we’ll want to run, and how to build the program.
The other agenda item was on our citywide trail system. I’m a big fan of hike and bike trails. My husband and I are out of the Katy Trail all the time, and I can’t wait for it to link up with the Old Trinity Trail.
We’ve got a master plan for our trail system, unlike most cities. We’ve also got more completed trail miles (about 85) than most cities. The goal is to triple that in a decade, which will complete our master plan. It’ll cost more than $100 million, but in addition to city money we’ll also seek grants and private funds.
I’ve been wanting something like this for awhile now, and glad some city finally did it (I just wish it were Dallas): an