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Boston begins turning on 311 system
By adamg on Tue, 08/11/2015 - 8:44am
Boston last night started renaming its Mayor's Hotline and Citizens Connect systems as Bos:311 as it begins to convert to the easier to remember phone number to call in complaints and reports about problems in the city.
Mayor Walsh had scheduled a press conference at 1:30 p.m. to formally announce the details of the changeover, but avid Citizens Connect user Drew Starr noticed the change last night when he brought up the former Citizens Connect app on his phone. The city's also changed the Twitter page for the complaint system.
The press conference will be held at District Hall in South Boston; you can watch it online.
City vehicles are also being branded with the new number, as James Chisholm noticed this morning:
Walsh made 311 - which other cities, such as New York and Somerville use - a commitment in his state of the city address in January. Mayor Menino had steadfastly refused to change the longer number or name of the complaint-system his administration set up.
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Comments
The future of yesterday is
The future of yesterday is here tomorrow!
okay
Of course I saw this, and now I have New Edition's "Mr. Telephone Man" in my head now..
o/~ i dialed 611, repair service.. she said "hello can I help you please o/~
On a different note, this is a good thing. Moving to 311 is an easy to remember number. Of course this only will work on landlines, and not cell phones. :-/
311 *should* work on cellphones
At least, it does in Somerville.
Yep, but ...
Looks like there are some gremlins this morning.
I'd like to know
I'd like to know how this is done. Because typically numbers like 311, 411, 611 will direct you to your carriers service and not to the local LATA equivalent of those numbers.
However this could be overcome if your cellphone number is out of the same CO as the town you wish to dial 311. Of course I have a Boston cell phone number, and I am on cape cod right now and I got an error code when I try to call 311.
geolocating cellphone tower
I'm pretty sure this is done by figuring out your cellphone's actual current location, not from its phone number (which could be any area code at all). If you are right near a municipal boundary, you might get the wrong town or city's service.
If this
If this was correct, then why isn't it used for 911. I'm order for me to get my local 911 dispatch, I have to ask the state wide 911 dispatch to connect me to the local police department when I call.
I'll check this out when I return to the city this weekend.
(I'm not asking to argue, genuinely curious.. Phone geek here so I like to learn about this stuff)
Probably because the 9-1-1
Probably because the 9-1-1 system is a well-established government service from the land-line days, and bogged down in the red tape and regulations. Expect it to take them another decade to adapt to any new or improved technologies out there right now.
Obligatory XKCD comic
https://xkcd.com/1129/
Obviously it's hard to
Obviously it's hard to predict if one specific phone/line will definitely work, but the city claims it should work with most phones.
Considering that http://www.cityofboston.gov/311/ says that if it doesn't work to call the old mayor's hotline number (617-635-4500), my guess is 311 is set up as a pointer to 617-635-4500 when called from a Boston-based phone number. I wouldn't be surprised if "Boston-based" w/r/t cell phones is defined in a wonky manner, though.
I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case
I once had to call some state agency for something or other (don't recall where or why) and when I looked up their number, it said, "This number is only reachable via a Massachusetts-based phone numbers. All other callers, (do some ridiculous, convoluted, and expensive telephone gymnastics that are not sensible, practical, or reasonable) to reach our office."
I mean, how DARE people keep their cell phone when they move to Massachusetts!
At least it's not "All Mixed
At least it's not "All Mixed Up" by 311, which is now stuck in my head.
Now I can picture the hold music:
"I'll be here awhile, (I) ain't goin' nowhere..."
Trackability?
With Citizen's Connect, you could easily see if a complaint had been addressed or not (at least according to the city). Does this exist with 311 or is it more of a one way communication? I liked the transparency of the CC app so I'd like to see that carried over to 311.
Looks like it's the same,
Looks like it's the same, just changed the number to call.
We'll see at the press conference ...
But, yeah, it's not like Menino didn't oversee the setup of something that was pretty much identical to 311, except for the phone number, which for some reason he stubbornly refused to change.
...and the name, "Mayor's 24
...and the name, "Mayor's 24 Hour Constituent Service".
Anything that provided a service, he said was the "Mayor's". Anything that people would complain about, he didn't.
it's literally the same app,
it's literally the same app, save for the name and the changed color scheme. I opened it up yesterday and the functionality was identical.
Great
Of course similar to the pothole expose earlier this year, I think a lot of those are simply marked closed without resolution. However, transparency without great execution is still better than nothing at all. It's a good basis for future improvement.
I suggested in the pothole
I suggested in the pothole thread that they need to take a page from free/open source software bug reporting tools and have status flags like "closed; duplicate" and "closed; wontfix". A lot of the "closed" pothole complaints were closed because the city didn't have jurisdiction to fix them, but the single "closed" status in CitizensConnect misleads people into thinking the problem is solved.
Marty Walsh yesterday's leadership today!
This is just another rebranding like Eversource. New name, logo, #, app, same crappy service.
Nice to see the city finally caught up with the 1970s in the 21st century with the 311 short tel though.
Another complaint dumping?
They they do another purge of complaints? I made a report last week, that disappeared. No notation or anything, just totally erased.
As long as the same people
As long as the same people "work" there, it will go on being a complete embarrassment. I used to work helpdesk and am usually unfailingly polite, but the creeps at Citizens Connect constantly interrupt, talk over me, do not let me get to the end of a sentence, and refuse to give their names. I give up. Marty wants to be represented by such aggressively incompetent and abusive clowns, I guess it's his city to ruin, until next election.
Someone is throwing tea in the harbor
Case #101001103465 - CLOSED Case closed. Harbor is Massport jurisdiction. Complaint forwarded.
Actually
That complaint is real, but it's been open and not acted on for more than a year:
https://mayors24.cityofboston.gov/reports/538f959b0882cf0f7c00071b
I called
And it was busy!!!
What's with the colon
What's with the colon in "BOS:311"? Are they planning to use TCP/311? Maybe they should use UDP/311 instead. That way if a ticket gets ignored, it's just as likely the city never received it.
Got a new one today
I got a new result to an old case: It was originally opened in March (bike rack - one of those single poles with circle at top 2/3rds - needed to be reset into the sidewalk). It was marked closed today for the following reason: "Case Noted. Rack issue has been added to our queue and we will work on getting it fixed."
Trouble is, I think one of the businesses got tired of seeing is tilted over at an angle that they may have removed it of their own accord. I'll have to double check when I go home tonight. Truth be told, I'd forgotten I'd made the complaint.