So New York City Mayor Bloomberg is well on his way to launching the 311 service for non-emergency city functions. I build stuff like this for a living, and I’m wondering how on earth it’s going to work. Citizens can call in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and get whatever service or referral they need. It’s supposed to improve the signal-noise ratio on 911, and there are vague promises of “making government efficient”. The price tag is $25M, but they admit that there are a lot of variables, including the number of users and the resulting staff requirements.
My gut says that a system like this is going to be a hardened crust over the spaghetti mess of city services. I expect the 311 service to be slow to respond to changes in the bureaucracies it represents, and become just another useless appendage to the Mayor’s office.
On the other hand, designing and training for this system could bring to light redundancies and inadequacies in the various agencies, which would be a good thing. It requires, though, that the Mayor pay attention to the implementation and be willing to make the reforms it demands.
a technology job is no excuse 