Author of machiavelli.net, proud father of three, interested in shaping network society. Welcome to my blog.And Where is 115?
For all of us waiting for the German 115 project to take off, there is interesting news from NYC. As Nick Sbordone, spokesman for the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication said, 311 “is more a philosophy than a call center,†in that it’s about presenting information to people when they want it, how they want it.
Over the weekend, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, and Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer suggested the administration create a mobile 311 application for the mobile generation. The specifics are quite mushy, but the idea is that New Yorkers should be able to to check public school closings, find out about alternate-side parking rules suspensions, and to report potholes. (A lot of the calls to 311 are for basic information, according to the city’s annual survey, available as a PDF.)
Some 311-type functions — like uploading a picture of a pothole or looking at traffic cams — can already be done from a phone through the city’s mobile Web site (which is a redirect from www.nyc.gov, courtesy of Usablenet). The problem is that’s just not branded under 311. It’s splayed all over the nyc.gov site.
As with other cities who have 311 services, like Baltimore and San Francisco, New York’s technologists are putting a lot of the information on the Web to streamline the burdens on the operators.
