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City officials and contractors flag major problems after 3-1-1 rollout; staff outline fixes
Summary
Public works staff and contractors told a joint Public Works and Sanitation meeting that the city’s new 3-1-1 platform has generated millions of requests and produced mapping, training and ticketing problems that forced workarounds and extra overtime; officials outlined steps including targeted training, GIS fixes and possible Salesforce integration.
The director of the Department of Public Works (name not specified) told a joint meeting of the Public Works Committee and the Sanitation Board that the city’s new 3-1-1 platform has created significant operational challenges since its March rollout, forcing staff and contractors to use spreadsheets and overtime to keep services running.
“Since the beginning, on March 28, the system in general has generated 2.8 million requests,” the director said in the meeting, and staff reported that roughly 70% of those requests relate to sanitation work. Contractors and staff said the new application could not accept proactive graffiti-removal entries for the first nine to 10 months after launch, so teams reverted to Excel grids and sent data to ITA for upload, producing gaps in the official records.
Contractors said the app also misplaces addresses on the map and sometimes records a report as occurring at the wrong property, producing “false negatives” when crews arrive. The director said engineers are working with Google to improve address validation. Contractors additionally described difficulty identifying duplicate or canceled tickets: staff reported more than 1,000 open requests and 651 previously canceled requests that still appear as open in the system.
Staff described impacts to operations and labor. The director said crews and call-center staff have worked extra hours to resolve tickets and maintain service levels and reported that the city is completing about 95% of tickets but at higher time and cost. Call-wait targets that had been 60–90 seconds during a prior system were not being met amid early spikes in call volume.
To address the problems, staff outlined several next steps: targeted in-person training for contractors so crews can practice in front of a monitor; technical fixes to GIS and address validation; consideration of Salesforce integrations to automate job delivery; and a review of how large bulk or illegal-dumping requests are routed through the call center. The chair also said recommended changes will be compiled and sent to the City Council for consideration.
The director and speakers noted both operational progress and remaining work: fixes are underway, but contractors asked for clearer, hands-on training and quicker reconciliation of cancelations and duplicates to reduce wasted crew time.
What comes next: staff said they will continue technical work with ITA and Google, pursue training for contractors, and provide a follow-up packet to council—no formal vote was taken at the meeting.
