We thought you might appreciate this piece from Sacramento. It’s both a cautionary tale, and one of positive eventual outcomes.

Cautionary, because the City started out by installing a 311 system without considering how to handle the calls efficiently once they arrived, thus causing a negative backlash from drowned Public expectations.

Positive, in that by offering an App (at $100K cost-ouch!), they can start to bypass the bureaucracy of call-triage, and get to the Departments that are responsible for doing the work.

You can see on the front-page of their website that the Public can, once they find the link on the bottom-left of the page, download three possible types of App! Follow the links and the Service Offerings are very restricted from a self-serve perspective; there are no connections to the County or State, so that Public still has to know that what they are reporting is in fact a City-provided service.

Public Service Request, out of the cloud-based “web box”, can deliver:

• Citizen engagement directly with every Department, right to the individual responsible, using the web.
• Auto re-direct for services that are the responsibility of the Upper Tier Agency, the Lower Tier Agency, the Conservation Agency, the Parks Agency, Utilities, Animal Welfare agencies etc.
• Accessibility from any browser, anywhere, especially iPhones, Blackberry(s) and their smartphone equivalents.
• Front-end Work Management with interface to your internal Work Management system (may require API configuration, subject to connectivity from the WM system supplier).
• Customized “web widgets” for every page on your website, to further streamline communications.
• Controlled feedback to the Public, and internal Service Request initiators, for real engagement and a consistent internal business process.
• Periodic, configurable summary reports (suitable for Council consumption).
• Contact Analytics to help focus resources to where they are most needed.
• Low annual cost with full onsite local support.

The majority of Cities, Townships, Towns, and Counties simply cannot afford a 311 implementation, in both monetary and organizational terms.

That’s where we can help by providing many of the benefits of a 311 system at a tiny fraction of the cost. Let us show you how it’s done.

Email Ian Lucas today. Or call 716.406.4944.