Steinhauer J. "New York Has a Number to Call: 311" NYT Metro Sec. B, p.1, April 23 2003

[Eugene Garfield]

In 1970 the theme of the 1970 meeting of ASIS was "The information Conscious
Society".  The URL contains my report published in JASIS 1971, vol 22,
p.71-3.
http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/V1p236y1962-73.pdf

In the New York Times of  23 Apr 2003, Metro Section B, page 1 (URL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/nyregion/23PHON.html ) "New York Has a
Number to Call: 311" by Jennifer Steinhauer, there is report about the new
city government system promoted by an information conscious Mayor Bloomberg,
the founder of the Bloomberg financial information service. I imagine there
may be similar services in other cities of the world but I haven't heard
about them.

Eugene Garfield

April 23, 2003

New York Has a Number to Call: 311

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

     he telephone operators at the city's 311 center had the
alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules down pat. They knew what to do
with a complaint about a  broken traffic light. Marriage license issue? Loud
car alarm? Recycling laws? Check! Check! Check!

But then, there was the chicken. A woman in the Bronx had one living in her
hallway, and she was none too happy about it. It seems she and her landlord
had divergent views on all matters of rent and heat, a dispute that
manifested itself in the landlord placing a rather menacing bit of fowl at
her front door.

The operator typed into the computer: "Chicken on stoop." The results were
quickly forthcoming. What the lady had was an agricultural problem, and she
was referred to the Department of Health.

Of the array of changes undertaken by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg since he
took office 15 months ago, few are as ambitious as his insistence on
overhauling the way city residents receive information from their
government.

Appalled to learn during the campaign that there was no central clearing
house where residents could call with their questions - there were over 40
call centers and help lines in the city connected to dozens of different
agencies - Mr. Bloomberg decided after he was elected that he would set up a
single line people could call to get answers to all questions pertaining to
government, and to lodge their complaints. Similar systems exist in cities
like Chicago, Baltimore and Dallas.

Today, as many as 32,023 callers a day find their way to 311, which quietly
went live in March. (The average daily volume is 8,385 calls.) New Yorkers
get there either by dialing directly or because they have been redirected
through another city hot line that will soon be obsolete.

"This is a top priority of the mayor," said Vincent A. LaPadula, the mayor's
senior advisor, who oversees 311 for City Hall. "This is our massive
reinventing-government project. I really believe 10 years from now the mayor
will look back and say, `We changed peoples' lives.' "

Mr. Bloomberg turned the task of creating 311 to Gino P. Menchini, the
city's information technology commissioner, who has put together a complex
system of telephone and computer technology aided in huge part by plain
human patience, which is tried daily among 201 agents who take calls 24
hours, seven days a week, in 170 languages. (Another 100 agents will be
added over the next three months.) The claim is that all calls get answered
within five seconds.

The call center is not without its controversies. While other city agencies
watched their budgets take anywhere from 2 percent to 15 percent hits this
year, the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, which
operates 311, had $7.7 million added to its budget, and is slated for a
fairly gentle cut in the mayor's proposed budget for next year, when cuts
are going to be very deep citywide. City Council members have complained
frequently and bitterly about the $25 million start-up costs for 311.

But Mr. Bloomberg is undaunted. Just yesterday, when confronted with a
newspaper article detailing the city's many potholes, Mr. Bloomberg shot
back. "If you see a pothole, what do you do? 311. It's very easy. That's the
whole idea of it. Call 311. They'll give you a number so that you can call
back the next day and see when the pothole is going to get fixed. It works
and I'm tired of people complaining about it."

Mr. Menchini shares Mr. Bloomberg's passion for technology and service - the
cornerstones of Mr. Bloomberg's information company - and can get a bit
excited when going over the fine points of the "geo-codes" (a program that
takes a caller's address and spits back her community board, precinct and
zip code) and good old fashioned phone manners.

"Figuring out what the problem is is a skill," Mr. Menchini said. "So if I
am understanding that your problem is with a chicken, then I must be
respectful of that and help you. We're committed to a lot of stringent
training."

He is trying to transform the act of answering calls from a mundane day job
into a career path. There is room to become a supervisor and more, as an
operator picks up intense knowledge about various areas of government.

At the 45,000-square-foot center on Maiden Lane in Lower Manhattan,
operators buzz quietly over various levels of calls. The first type is
simple. Someone wants a phone number of a government agency - they are given
it or transferred. Other callers ask for information that is easily
available with a quick click of the operator's mouse - zoo hours, for
instance - and they are given the answers, or the operator will fill out a
complaint about, say, a pothole. Then there are more complex questions, that
go either to a specialist who used to work at one of the agency call centers
now located in 311, or are transferred to the appropriate agency. Those
range from the fairly simple - how to get a birth certificate - to complex
tax questions that take 45 minutes to answer.

Another common set of calls relate to so-called quality of life issues,
which make up a large volume of 311 calls. Noise is the most common, but the
hot line also receives plenty of calls from steamed people whose driveways
are blocked by churchgoers or bar patrons who never made it home on a Sunday
morning. Those and other police matters are sent by computer to the
appropriate precinct in a matter of minutes, and callers are given a
tracking number to follow through, just as they are on every unresolved
call.

"The mayor is very involved on the precinct level," Mr. LaPadula said. "He
wants the precinct commander to have real time information on quality of
life complaints." As a result, the city is able to use 311 as a new
management tool.

The Police Department is learning a lot more about what types of
non-emergency police complaints are cropping up where, and plans to address
these issues in a fashion similar to Compstat, which measures crime in
various neighborhoods. "We can get a much better understanding of what is
going on out there," Mr. Menchini said. "You can see how the precincts are
stacking up."

Not that it is easy. People can be rude, unspecific, ill informed and often
do not have a pen within reach. Operators are often retrained on the fine
skills of patience. There is a quiet room in the building, where there are
no phones but there are comfy chairs, where operators can regroup.

Indeed the rest of the 311 call center can most politely be described as
modest. There is new carpeting, bright lighting and new furniture. Operators
do not have their own desks; they keep their belongings in a locker and move
day to day. There is a small area with vending machines and tables. The
desks are smallish. The elevators
are perhaps the slowest operating in Lower Manhattan. And the operators have
yet to face the increased traffic that will come as word of 311 spreads and
replaces the city's myriad other hot lines. The big question then will be
how fast the city can take care of all the problems it learns about.

But it is here, Mr. Menchini insists, that a revolution in government is
really happening. "This is a microcosm of the city's world," he said
excitedly, tapping at a computer screen. "Where is it noisy? Where is it
cold? Where are there too many cars?"


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_______________________________________________________________________
Eugene Garfield, PhD.  email: garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu
home page: www.eugenegarfield.org
Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266
President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com
Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com
Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology
(ASIS&T)  www.asis.org
_______________________________________________________________________