Government Technology - August 2007 - (Page 52)

telecom “Most of the cities in the world could fit into New York City. We’re trying to break it down so people can relate to their neighborhood.” Gale Brewer, New York City councilwoman, Manhattan’s Upper West Side didn’t pass along call data to elected officials, Brewer said, which is why she authored Local Law 47, which mandates that city administrators release monthly reports of data collected on calls made to 311 to elected officials and the public. The law was passed by the City Council in May 2005, and in June 2006 the first reports were made publicly available. With the law, New York City joined other big cities in giving politicians and the public Miami-Dade County’s 311 system has ﬁelded 2.2 million calls since opening in December 2004, but is considered pint-sized compared to New York City’s service demand. Nicholas Sbordone, spokesman for DoITT, said the Local Law 47 reports were upgraded in March 2007 — where once users waded through a 700-page document listing all community board information, now people can skip straight to several pages of more specific information. The law also encouraged various parts of New York City government to intermingle, charging DoITT CIO and Commissioner Paul Cosgrave to meet quarterly with community boards and others to discuss the reports, and other pressing issues. Government Technology’s Public CIO magazine (Transformation in 1,000 Days, June/July 2007) takes a closer look at how Cosgrave has embraced community board involvement. “The meetings are not just to talk about the reports, but also discuss other enhancements we can make for the community boards, and to bring them in as a partner,” Sbordone said, explaining that community boards are a fire hydrant. Brewer reacted by first calling the Department of Environmental Protection — the agency that oversees citywide water issues. But as several hours passed, and the department didn’t act, she took a different tack. “Because I happened to know the city well,” she said, “I called the fire department locally, and I know they have a wrench, and they turned it off in three minutes.” The Miami-Dade County, Fla., 311 call center — the nation’s first multijurisdictional 311 center — will soon make real-time data available to local officials, said Judi Zito, director of the Miami-Dade County Government Information Center. The call center already offers ServiceStat, a year-old program that lets agencies and county and city leaders see nightly updated information on service requests, recurrent problems and government inefficiencies. Through the system, city and county officials also have access to the same knowledge database that 311 call takers do. “If they receive a call from a constituent in their district office about a peacock gone wild, they can type in ‘peacock,’ and they find the same information that [311 operators] will,” Zito said. Sharing information between 311 and local governments is mutually valuable, Zito said. AUG_07 access to precinct- and neighborhood-level reports that transform unrefined data into potentially useful information to hatch new policy or give an argument for change. Local Law 47 requires the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) to issue monthly reports to the City Council, the Public Advocate (the elected citywide ombudswoman), community boards (local representative bodies focused on neighborhood issues) and the public regarding 311 call data. The data is cataloged by inquiries and requests for service, and tells what agency handled each situation, what the call was about, how many cases were opened, how many were closed and the average resolution time. The information is grouped under region and can pertain to a particular council district, borough, community board district or ZIP code, or it can take a citywide view. When asked whether Brewer’s office uses the reports, Lai admitted the office hadn’t relied on them heavily so far. But he added that a recent change in the report format makes the data more useful. “I’m sure in big politics cities — New York and Chicago come to mind — there was some worry about losing touch with the voters, or more precisely, losing touch with votes.” Gary Allen, editor, DISPATCH Monthly magazine j j 52 good resource as informants on neighborhood happenings. Closing the Loop Now Brewer is suggesting that New York City should take the next step — give local officials, such as community boards, realtime access to 311 information, which she said would let 311 callers tap into experts who know how to navigate city-government channels. “We know every blade of grass, every building, every unit, every person in our neighborhood,” Brewer said. She remembered a caller who complained about water spurting from a neighborhood “Through ServiceStat now we have sort of a countywide view of what’s going on in the organization instead of a departmental view,” she said. “So we can look at the potholes, the stray dogs and the missed garbage pickups together rather than trying to make sense of data that really didn’t make sense before. That’s been the great benefit in all of this.” But Miami-Dade’s 311 center, which has fielded 2.2 million calls since opening in December 2004, is pint-sized compared to New York City’s mammoth operation and large service demand. “Most of the cities in the world could fit into New York City,” Brewer said. “We’re trying to break it down so people can relate to their neighborhood.” http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - August 2007

Contents Point of View The Big Picture The Last Mile Letter to the Editor GT Spectrum Up Close Vanishing Act Way Back Machine Fast Track to Nowhere Best of Both Worlds Texting 911? GIS to Go Neighborhood Watch Two Cents Products Signal: Noise Government Solutions

Government Technology - August 2007

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