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Joint committee orders biannual reports and fixes after council hears widespread MyLA 3-1-1 rollout problems
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Summary
A joint meeting of the Government Operations and Public Works committees heard operating bureaus and vendors describe mapping, routing and data-entry problems with the new MyLA 3-1-1 platform. The committee approved an amendment instructing biannual performance reports and interface improvements and continued the item for follow-up.
A joint meeting of the Government Operations and Public Works committees on March 11 focused on operational problems caused by the city’s new MyLA 3-1-1 platform and directed departments to provide regular status reports and fixes.
The committee approved an amendment instructing the Department of Public Works (including the Board of Public Works and bureaus) in coordination with ITA to deliver biannual MyLA 3-1-1 performance reports showing total requests received, total requests closed, any backlogs and average response times disaggregated by council district. The amendment also instructed the Bureau of Sanitation and ITA to improve the bulky-item and illegal-dumping request interface and asked the Information Ecology Agency to produce a performance report identifying persistent operational issues and possible solutions.
Office of Community Beautification (OCB) Director Paul Roch told the committee that graffiti-abatement contractors have struggled to enter proactive work in the new system and that the office had reverted to a spreadsheet workflow for proactive entries. "Our contractors have found it challenging to work with" the new platform, Roch said, describing a loss of historical proactive-entry data and the inability for contractors or OCB staff to view comments left on service requests.
Gabe Miranda, assistant director for solid resources operations at LA Sanitation, said the new system generated roughly 2,800,000 service requests citywide since launch and that about 2,100,000 of those requests belong to sanitation, roughly 70 percent of the total. Miranda said the agency has opened about 700 support "snow tickets," with roughly 120 still outstanding, and reported a completion rate near 95–97 percent but with increased operational burden on staff.
Nicholas Tran, LA Sanitation’s director of systems, described the field-service Lightning routing application in Salesforce as the chief operational challenge. Where routing and dispatch previously took 15–30 minutes, Tran said the new process can take 1.5–3 hours, forcing staff to come in early and work significant overtime. He said Salesforce committed about $1,300,000 in professional services to help remediate routing and dispatch issues, a remediation effort he said would represent about 22 weeks of work and roughly 5,500 hours.
Council members pressed for concrete ETAs, in-person contractor training and fixes that allow crews to enter proactive work directly in the field rather than relying on Excel uploads. OCB asked specifically for training sessions "where they're able to all be in the same room, sit in front of some computer monitors" so contractors can work through problems together, Paul Roch said.
Ed Magos, an AGM with ITA, said the system has seen a 20 percent increase in submissions and reported "100% uptime" since launch. Magos said city staff have implemented more than 300 discrete changes—representing 1,255 change requests—since rollout and offered ITA’s help with in-person training and documentation. He also noted staffing shortfalls and asked for council support to invest in ongoing system support.
Committee members asked departments to provide department-by-department flowcharts showing how the ticket flow and data handoffs worked under the old system and how they function now, and to identify the specific unresolved items by department. The committee continued the item for follow-up and set expectations for ETAs on the requested fixes.
The clerk read an amendment into the record that adds the reporting and interface-improvement requirements; later in the meeting the committee approved the matter "as amended." The clerk called the roll and the committee approved the amendment and instructions. The joint meeting then adjourned.
The committee’s next steps include receiving the biannual reporting language requested in the amendment, ETAs from ITA and the bureaus for in-person training and technical fixes, and updates on the Salesforce remediation work proposed for routing and dispatch.
