Come July, irate Denver residents with beefs about jarring potholes or pesky tomcats no longer will have to fumble through a telephone book to register concern with a city agency.
They’ll just dial 311.
The city plans to debut its new 311 call center, a one-stop service center that will give citizens quick access to every city agency, on July 7.
Implementation of the non-emergency number is a top priority of Mayor John Hickenlooper, who says it will revolutionize the way residents receive information and services from their government.
“When people call for us to remove graffiti or fill a pothole, we will give them the equivalent of a Fed Ex tracking number so they can hold us accountable and we can hold the employees accountable who do the work,” the mayor said.
Currently, residents must negotiate nearly 1,200 telephone numbers for city services, said Kelly Jean Brough, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff for accountability and reform.
Too often, she said, a citizen gets put on hold when they call for a city service, and then their calls get shuttled from place to place.
But the 25 call-takers the city is hiring to staff the 311 lines will be armed with a comprehensive database that will allow them to quickly steer citizens to the proper agency.
“I consider it like this: Instead of you trying to figure out how to map our system, you call us, we’ll navigate our system for you and figure out what you need,” Brough said.
Citizens also will be able to e-mail their concerns to the call center, which will operate from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. with access to translators for more than 182 languages.
The call-takers also will be able to tell a concerned citizen just how long it will take the city to get that abandoned car towed or that wall of graffiti cleaned up.
Regional interest is also building for the new service, with a meeting this Wednesday before the Metro Mayor’s Caucus to explore interest in expanding the service to other governments.
Brough and the mayor said the system means much more than improved services for citizens.
It also will give city officials data that will allow them to see just how long it takes to fill a pothole, or what types of services citizens are requesting the most.
“It will allow us to create internal management reports that are really powerful because then it gives the mayor and his management team the opportunity to look at the productivity of the workforce and that type of thing,” said Michael Locatis III, the city’s chief information officer.
The city invested more than $3.5 million to set up the new call center. Annual costs are expected to reach about $1.5 million to run the center, which is modeled after existing ones in New York City, Houston, Baltimore, Chicago, Indianapolis, Albuquerque and Austin, Texas.
The city is spending less than the other cities. For instance, New York City spent $25 million in startup costs.
“Other cities larger and smaller have spent considerably more than us,” Locatis said. “The reason we were able to keep the cost of the implementation so low is we negotiated really good contracts, but we also studied the 311 implementation that went before us.”
Already, on the first floor of the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Building, the new system is getting a workout.
While the 311 telephone number isn’t in operation yet, the city has begun channeling calls for five city agencies into the new call center. The city is getting an early start as it prepares for the day when it expects up to 3,200 telephone calls daily.
The seven call-takers already in place are handling questions for services such as street maintenance, animal control, calls to the mayor’s office and the city clerk and recorder’s office.
The 311 initiative has had an extra benefit for the city, Hickenlooper said. The city needed to study all of its operations so it would be able to tell citizens how long they can expect it to take to get their issue resolved.
In doing that review, the city found ways to streamline operations, Hickenlooper said.
“It’s the first time ever that we’ve asked every single city employee, ‘What do you do all day?”‘ the mayor said.
“By collecting all that information, it allows us to help our employees to be more successful. It’s allowed us to delve very deeply in how we get things done.”
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-820-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
