Comments on: A Tale of Two Cities: How DC and San Francisco Are Handling Citywide 311

By: Addison

Addison — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:38:36 +0000

It’s great to see progress being made on behalf of communication with citizens… I don’t think there is nearly enough of that going on in most world governments.

By: Bill Murray

Bill Murray — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:41:28 +0000

I saw the need for 311 recently while driving just outside Washington, D.C. on Baltimore-Washington Parkway on afternoon during rush hour. Driving north, I saw a pitbull that looked a bit disoriented (it was hot) and either abandoned or stray. After making a call to my older sister, who has been in the dog walking business for years, I tried making calls in Prince Georges County and Washington, D.C. to human societies or animal control, and after a couple of fruitless attempts, I gave up. To have an effective 311 system for Prince Georges and one for Washington that I could access through my cell phone would have been great.

By: Lindsay

Lindsay — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:36:16 +0000

I’m having a hard time grasping the concept of this new approach because it seems so anti-government-business model (take a number, wait a long time, reject request for lack of proper forms or documents).

Will this be the first time that Government actually welcomes and uses input from the citizens? Will users of 311 get an acknowledgment of their request, status reports and followup upon completion? I’ve not seen that in any of my communications with any Government office yet, from the county clerk to state highway department to passport office to Senator.

By: Craigslist Search

Craigslist Search — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:43:39 +0000

Politicians aren’t always on the cutting edge, to put it mildly. But despite technological hurdles that have long plagued government officials, Twitter is finally beginning to catch on in Washington, D.C.

By: Lucas

Lucas — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:08:28 +0000

I agree that the DC approach will probably be the best one. I find it interesting that the governments are making these efforts; I think they are to be commended!

By: Joel McLaughlin

Joel McLaughlin — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:44:32 +0000

It is good that they want to interact and create a closer government to our people. It will be interesting to see how this evolves. I really don’t understand how Twitter gained such an incredible following, maybe it’s because I don’t have much time to use it. I think it’s a neat site, but it’s interesting that it’s becoming so amazingly popular.

By: Mark Flaherty

Mark Flaherty — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:47:26 +0000

I agree with the risk of depending on Twitter. I’ve seen performance hiccups when their growth spurt was happening in Q1. Personally I predict that it will peter out as a popular communication platform as a result of its success. There will be too much clutter to be able to use it productively.

By: Craigslist Search

Craigslist Search — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:38:43 +0000

Could an open 311 enable resources to be used more efficiently? Using open 311 to find opportunities to use resources that would otherwise go wasted? For instance, the pothole example – if street repairers are working in a neighborhood and have some left over asphalt – could they stop and fill it up on their way home for the day?
Is there a way to create a relationship between organizations like Wastematch and Open311?

By: cody

cody — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:40:38 +0000

I certainly believe that every move in the direction of openness is important especially when coming on the heels of the closed minded Bush administration. I hope this trend continues and I hope everyone supports it!

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:32:32 +0000

I agree with the caution you raise around using Twitter as the basis for citizens to submit 311 requests in SF.

I’d add to your comments by pointing out that the SF model looks to be just another front-end to a customer service rep manually parsing the content of the Tweet and updating a back end system to process the request (unless I’m missing something). While using a service like Twitter to submit 311 requests is probably a lot easier on citizens, its not clear that it has the cost saving potential of an API-based approach. People (in government, as in any other organization) are usually the most expensive resource.

DC’s approach, on the other hand, should allow for a completely automated method for entering 311 requests into whatever back end system is used to process and act on 311 service requests.

Seems like DC’s approach will have a much bigger cost savings impact than the SF approach. Just my two cents…

BTW, if I can help on the PHP library for the DC 311 API, let me know.