311 System's Appeal Spreads

Computerworld - With its implementation of the Citizen Response System (CRS) from Motorola Inc., Dallas joins a growing number of cities that are automating their 311 call center systems.
"What they're doing in Baltimore, Chicago, New York and other cities is remarkable. It's not just an improvement in call response; it's revolutionary," says John Kost, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.
Systems such as CRS are modeled on customer relationship management (CRM) software, Kost says, "but with a major twist." Most commercial uses of CRM focus on an account or a household. Cities are more driven by events -- the key thing is the pothole, not the person who called.
In March 2001, Baltimore debuted its 311 call center, which also uses Motorola's CRS, but using an application service provider (ASP) model.
Baltimore was using CitiStat, a system that collects statistics on agencies' performance of city services. Every two weeks, department heads meet with the mayor and cabinet to review the reports.
What Motorola's CRS would add is tracking of 311 calls and their resolution in a centralized Oracle database.
While setting up the pilot, the CRS management team realized that "if we make this system responsible for tracking calls for services, it'll be a critical system for us," says Ray Schreiner, IT project manager at the Mayor's Office of IT in Baltimore.
The question then became, "What's it going to take for us to operate and maintain that environment on a 24/7 basis?" he adds.
And that, Schreiner says, is when Baltimore officials went to Motorola, which acts as an ASP to the city for the CRS.
At its data center in Schaumburg, Ill., Motorola hosts the database on Oracle servers. The application runs on a server from Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Citrix Systems Inc. And Baltimore runs the Citrix thin client "on PCs as much as four years old," Schreiner says.
"We knew we'd be first in the boat on this," he says. But as more cities sign on for the hosted model, Baltimore is hoping to see some economies of scale, he adds.
Dubbed CitiTrack, CRS is used by CitiStat to monitor agency performance of city services. "That could mean anything from, 'How long did it take for those potholes to be filled?' to, 'Why are we having so many water main breaks on the Lower East Side?'" Schreiner says.
From any of the Citrix clients in the city, officials can now check on how many complaints have been made about, for example, a dirty alley, whether andwhen it was resolved, and if not, why not. "Perhaps there was a backlog of city street-cleaning trucks in the motor pool awaiting service," Schreiner says.
"To be able to build and track performance metrics of every department is going to have a profound impact on how individual city employees operate," Kost says.
Although the software was developed for municipal 311 systems, "enterprises with event-driven business, such as AAA, which needs to track vehicles through towing, repair and so forth, could also use it," he says.