Overview of U.S. and Canadian 311 city and county service center
(Übersicht US und kanadische 311 Call Center)
I have created a mash-up of the U.S. and Canadian 311 projects (last update: 9/26/07) which I would like to share with you. There are currently around 70 service centers (311) in the U.S.. Most of the 311 projects have been realized on the municipal level and in most of the U.S. biggest cities. While 11 countys have decided to offer 311, not all of them are multi-jurisdictional, that is information and services from the municipalities within a county are not integrated. Furthermore, 311 services can have various levels of sophistication and may either be operated by the police department or by newly generated 311 service units/departments.
The first city to test 311 was Baltimore in 1996, however, it was Chicago which used 311 in 1999 in a much broader way for public service provision, city management and accountability. The City of Chicago’s 311 still is the first place to visit and learn from for many elected officials and public managers. Today, New York City is the biggest 311 implementation in the U.S. (size of the service center/ population served) and probably the most well known implementation due to the global media coverage it received. With a pop of approx. 5400 Alaska’s City of Bethel is the smallest place to use the number.
Except for the City of Somverille none of the cities in Massachusetts have implemented 311. Given the close proximity of cities in the greater Boston metro area its really hard to understand from a citizen’s perspective why there couldn’t be a single 311 solution for the whole area. After all, there would be around 3.6 million people less to serve than in NYC and there should be many information redundancies.
Blue = Municipal 311 (Realized)
Red = County 311 (Realized)
Yellow = Planning or implementation stage
Green = 311 in Canada
If you know about new 311 projects please email me.