Sick of potholes and broken parking meters?
In a move to speed up its 311 service, the District government has unveiled a new smartphone application that allows residents to submit service requests on the go.
The mobile service is part of a larger priority to make D.C. government more “customer-friendly,” Mayor Vincent Gray said Wednesday. The app allows District agencies to be notified in real time of broken streetlights, signs and other nonemergency problems, he said as he debuted the new technology.
“There’ll be no hold time, no wait time — it’s just a matter of how long it takes to take a photo,” Gray said.
The District’s 311 Citywide Call Center fields more than 2 million calls per year and sorts through numerous online requests, resulting in inevitable backlogs. The app cuts out the operators by sending complaints directly to the District agencies responsible for handling them.
“If we know about it sooner, we can address the issue sooner,” said Monica Hernandez, a spokeswoman for D.C.’s Department of Transportation.
Moreover, the service costs the city nothing to run, said Chief Technology Officer Rob Mancini, whose office worked on the app’s development. Though the program cost $5,000 to develop, there are no additional operating costs, Mancini said.
The app offers more than 80 service requests. Most of those are handled by city agencies involved with transportation and utilities, said Jennifer Greene, who heads the Office of Unified Communications, which runs the call center.
So how does the new technology work? After capturing a photo of the problem, users sign in to the app, hit “report” and describe their request. GPS technology tracks the user’s location, making it easier for agencies to find the problem when they’re ready to address it. Once the location is confirmed and the request submitted, an automated response provides the user with an estimated date that the problem will be fixed. Other reported problems from “neighbors” in the vicinity can also be viewed.
The app is free for both iPhones and Androids.
