COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY AND INFORMATION SERVICES City Hall, Room 400 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, March 19, 2025 10:00 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU - CHAIR COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL - VICE CHAIR COUNCILMAN MARK SQUILLA COUNCILMAN JIM HARRITY COUNCILMAN NICOLAS O'ROURKE COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS MS. HARTMAN, CLERK BILL: 250059 - - - CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Good morning, everyone. I note the hour -- I now note the hour has come. This is the Committee on Technology and Information Services. Wednesday, March 19th, 2025. And, Ms. Hartman, will you please call the roll to take attendance? And members that are in attendance, please indicate you are present when your name is called.
Councilmember Harrity? CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: On his way. Thank you. A quorum of the committee is present and the hearing is now called to order. This is the public hearing of the Committee on Technology and Information Services regarding resolution No. 250059. Ms. Hartman, will you please read the title of the bill?
Resolution 23 No. 250059, resolution authorizing the Committee on Technology and Information Services to hold a hearings regarding the operation of the Philadelphia 311, non-emergency hotline, and its engagement with City Departments. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you. I just wanted to open with good morning. Thank y'all for being here. Today we examine a crucial part of our operations, Philly 311 system. This hearing isn't about checking in on the hotline for non-emergency inquiries, it's about ensuring that when residents reach out for help to their local government, they get answers, not frustration. Technology is not just computer programs and futuristic hardware, technology and how all policy is implemented. The best ideas for how to improve our government easily breaks down and can't be accomplished if you don't have technology systems and processes to make them work. As Chair of Technology and Information Services Committee, I've come to learn that if the systems we rely on do not work efficiently, our city does not work efficiently. A responsive and reliable 311 system is essential to a well run city allowing residents to report problems, seek information and see their daily lives and the environment around them improve. Everyone here has endured the long wait times, inconsistent responses and a disconnect between requests and resolution. The 311 service system should be designed to bridge the gap between residents and city services, not become another process to navigate. We expect our constituents to trust us and they need to be able to trust that their people needs are met with solutions, not silence. A stream line responsive government is not just a goal, in 2025 it is a need. Reporting an abandoned vehicle, a missed trash pick up, a Philadelphian in need, or any other urgent quality of life program, it doesn't matter. Every request deserves to be handled efficiently and effectively. If we check an Amazon package down to the door step, we should be able to see where our city service request is. The communication in your 311 system should match the real status of your inquiry and what the solution is. Today we examine the barriers that are holding Philly 311 back from being a transparent and responsive service. Investing in better technology, clearer communication and stronger accountability measures will not only in prove 311, it will improve the entire city of Philadelphia and the future of the city. I'd like to thank Councilmember Driscoll for introducing this hearing. I look forward to learning from our witnesses today and working with my colleague to ensure that Philly 311 lives up to its promise. Let's make sure government works the way it should, effectively, transparently and with the people at the center of everything we do. And with that I will ask if anybody else has opening remarks? Councilmember Driscoll.
Thank you, madam chair. And good morning, council colleagues, and those testifying today technology and information service, regarding the operations of Philly 311 system. I want to thank my colleagues for supporting the resolution that I introduced earlier this year to hold this hearing, and I also want to thank Chairwoman Councilmember are you Landau for hosting today. Philly 311 was established in 2008 as a non-emergent information hotline to address a variety of quality of life issues. It's important that we reference it a non-emergent because one of the core missions of the systems was to alleviate non-emergency calls that were flooding our 911 system. Today the most common concerns reported to 311 are abandoned vehicles, illegal dumping, missed trash collection, and property maintenance issues. Thousands of these concerns are reported monthly through 311. The 311 system is the reporting tool, not the enforcement agency. Once the request is submitted it is then transmitted to the appropriate department and 311 is supposed to update the constituents with any developments. However, a clear disconnect has emerged between residents and city services with Philly 311, despite the 311 Philly website promising residents to improve your community. Report an issue to watch it get fixed. They still experience long wait times, unclear responses and unresolved issues. And have criticized for failing to meet service level agreement timelines or not addressing issues at all. The city invests millions of dollars annually into the 311 system. And I think it's important that we have this discussion today as we are in budget season again. It's important that it works effectively and efficiently for all Philadelphians and employees who rely on it daily. We do not want residents to feel like their concerns are not being addressed and reverting to using 911 as their primary line of non-emerging calls. Our goal is to make assure everyone that the non-emergency hotline is working for them. So I look forward, Madam chair, to today's discussion. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you, Councilmember Driscoll. Does anybody else have anymore opening remarks? No. Okay. With that, Ms. Hartman, will you please call the first panel we have to testify this morning on resolution No. 250049.
Jocelyn Jones, executive director for Philly 311. And available for questions is Rich Montanez, Scott and Ralph DiPietro.
Good morning. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Good morning. Please state your name, for the record, and proceed with your testimony.
My name is Jocelyn Jones and I'm the executive director of Philly 311. Good morning, Chairperson Landau and Vice Chairperson Squilla, and members of the Committee of Technology and Information Services. As stated, my name is Jocelyn Jones and I'm the Philly 311 executive director. And I appreciate this opportunity to testify regarding resolution 250059 introduced by Councilmember Driscoll. The Philly 311 contact center serves as Philadelphia customer service hub for non-emergency inquiries supporting the Mayor's vision in making the city of Philadelphia the safest, cleanest and greenest big city in the nation with economic opportunity for all. Philly 311 offers multiple communication channels where customers ask questions and report issues which are submitted to the respective departments as service requests. Philly 311 can be reached through a variety of communication channels for inquiring, reporting issues or service request submissions when customers need assistance. The most used method is the telephone, however, you can submit a request through -- contact us through our mobile app, using our web application as well. Philly 311 responds to an average of 1,600 calls a day. Managing more than 60 types of service requests across eight city departments. Those departments include License and Inspections, Philadelphia Water Department, Philadelphia Fire Department, Philadelphia Police Department, Community Life Improvement Program, better known as CLIP. And Philadelphia Parks and Rec and the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure systems. Each day approximately 2,400 cases are entered responding -- into Philly 311's customer relations management system. Our team is not only responding to calls and inquiries, but we are also going into the community to meet people where they are. Last year, Philly 311 community engagement team participated in approximately 200 community events across the city. To provide callers with the most accurate and up-to-date information, relevant city departments supply 311 with essential details to create and maintain what we refer to as our knowledge based articles. These allow members of the Philly 311 team to provide callers with information they are inquiring about. The knowledge based system also provide the call agents with the SLA, service level agreement, that the departments have provided us with. And that allows us to set a level of expectation with the caller. The knowledge based articles serve as a key resource for addressing customer inquiries. Both information requests and service request dates are stored within our customer relations management system. To uphold quality standards, Philly 311 performs agent weekly call monitoring sessions, monthly calibration sessions and we recently implemented and launched a customer survey, satisfaction survey at the end of calls that customers can take, which allows them to rate their interaction with Philly 311. In 2023, Philly 311 made several improvements to the service infrastructure, including automatic case routing, adding six new request types, implementing a new cell phone based telephone system, which is a software program used for making the telephone calls over the Internet opposed to using a telephone improving call management and overall efficiency. Additionally, Philly 311 has upgraded both its interactive voice response IVR system, which allows us to route calls which have new prompts to assist callers with inquiries. For example, during the 2024 Presidential election season, the Office of City of Commissioners and board of elections forwarded their incoming calls to Philly 311. Selection -- we made a cue, election support cue. This enhancement helped to streamline call routing and reduce the volume that was going to the Office of City Commissioners and the Board of Elections ensuring constituents received timely and accurate information.
To put that into perspective, during the 2024 Presidential election, Philly 311 handled 20,862 calls over a three- week period of time. We recognize that many times when residents call Philly 311 it is usually because there's a quality of life issue impacting them or their community, which can lead to frustration. That frustration can later lead to a passionate call to Philly 311. Being mindful of this, in 2024, Philly 311 delivered to its staff an emotional intelligence and customer service essential training, which was geared towards recognizing, understanding and managing ones emotion while defusing a frustrated caller from a constituent in order to find a solution on the call while ensuring we are providing exceptional customer service to the residents of Philadelphia. Philly 311 has since provided these trainings to multiple departments at their request. Thank you very much for the opportunity to address you today. My colleagues and I are happy to answer any questions that you may have. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you very much. First, I'd like to recognize that Jimmy Harrity -- Councilmember Jimmy Harrity joined us. I'd like to wish him a very happy birthday today. Thank you for coming to your committee hearing on your birthday, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for your testimony, I appreciate it. I worked for the city for many years and had multiple tours of the 311 call centers. And understanding -- I was here when it was created actually so I understand it was -- what was the intent when building it from the ground up. I have a couple of just basic questions to start with. In your testimony you said you get 1,600 calls a day, but you enter 2,400 cases into the system. Can you explain the discrepancy in those numbers, where the rest of them are coming from? And then I'll stop there and go into the next.
The remaining of that number is the cases we get. We call them non-call cases. Those are the cases that come over the mobile app, through the Internet, through web. So we are not only just answering the phones, we're also taking -- as your mobile app and as I'm sure many of your constituents can tell you about the mobile app, you can submit a request to us that way, too. So that's the difference in the numbers. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: So about 800 of those each day and 1,600 calls a day.
Correct. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Okay. So what kind of data do you have of the usage of the system through the phone call center versus on the app? What's the break down of the contacts you have versus the phone versus the app? And do you have any demographic data between the two groups, phone versus app?
I can give you in the calendar year of 2024. I can give you what we received as service requests. Not necessarily the phone versus the non-calls, but I can get that information for you. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: One of my questions is what do you track? Do you as a matter of practice on your end track and keep the data of the distinction between the calls? What they're asking for, where are they coming from, which council district, versus the app, where are they coming from. Any demographics on that? What are they asking for?
Yes. We do keep that information and I can get that for you. We also have, I believe last year started giving -- sending to each council person, their district, what happens within their district. And in that report, I believe it's outlined the calls. How much come in online for us, and then what are the type of service requests or information requests being asked. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: And do you follow through on that request to see what the result was? So you can tell a district council person, you know, we got 100 calls about these three things. Do you as a call center follow through to make sure that when they went to L&I and Parks & Rec and Streets, that they were resolved.
Unfortunately we do not do that because we rely upon the servicing department once they get the information, we send it immediately over the them that they will assign it out to someone within their department. And then they will -- once it's been completed, they will close out that ticket for us. If it's an information request, something which someone is calling and inquiring about something, then we are just documenting it for you. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Okay. Also, when you send it to the department -- I'm sorry, yeah. When you send it to the department or agency, you mark it's a closed, right?
No, we do not. The department and agency marks it as closed. So once they are finished doing whatever the service is, they mark it closed, and they also put a comment in the system which if the constituent or customer has given their email address, that is how that is generated and it tells them whatever the servicing department has provided. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Do you mark it as transferred over to system -- to the department or agency?
Yes, there's a way for us to look at the system and we know it's been sent over and it's been received -- received by the department. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Okay. And do you -- maybe I'll stop here and let -- I'm going to stop here for a minute and let somebody else ask questions. I've got a lot. Councilmember Driscoll?
Thank you for your hard work. A couple things that I just wanted to wrap my hands around a little bit. So the Mayor started this new community outreach in every district. Is there any interaction between your department and these new units in each of the ten councilmatic districts?
When -- they have a partner portal. So whatever they submit comes into the 311 as well. And it -- excuse me, I'm sorry. Can I just ask Christine to come up for a moment? Because I want to say this absolutely correct. She set this up. So it actually goes over to 311, and then 311 sends it over to the servicing department that it should go to. That's the interaction that we have the Mayor's community team.
I'm just wondering if there's a -- as this evolves, if there's a way that the community outreach offices can sort of be part of your quality control. Like if they get a list of council district of what you're working on, you know, what's closed, what's not closed, maybe they can put that within their spear somehow, without interfering with what you're doing. I don't know.
You know, that sounds, Councilman, reasonable and it's something I can definitely look into. It is not something we currently do right now, other than the fact that when they take a service request and they're out in the community, it does go through our system and that's where it's tracked. I do not know whether they have their own tracking system or not because they we don't interact like that. However, I know they're in our partner portal.
So let's say they get a complaint or see something in the council district, are they entering it into 311 or are they contacting different departments themselves?
They have the option to enter cases into our partner portal.
Yes, they have user profiles created in your partner portal so they do have access to it.
Okay. And then I guess the other -- you mentioned during the Presidential election, now that we have an office in every council district, my hope is that those sort of requests wouldn't go through 311, that they would go right to the commissioner's office and they would be staffed properly. So that -- it seems like you're busy enough instead of getting involved in every election. So I appreciate what you did, I'm not sure that was the right way to go there, but we can revisit that later. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you. Councilmember Jimmy Harrity?
Thank you, Chairwoman. Good day. How are you doing?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Just kind of following up on my colleague. In my office on multiple occasions, complaints placed by constituents -- service requests placed to 311 have come back unfounded. How do representatives determine that a case is unfounded? And how do we respond to constituents when there is no 14 explanation provided for the type of case resolution?
When a constituent gets it they can always call. In fact, we encourage them to call 311.
But these were requests that were called into 311, but came back unfounded, but the issue is still going on.
I understand that, but we're not to one who puts in the unfounded. So if the constituent gets something like that, then we encourage them to call 311. And what we will do is escalate and say, hey, this constituent is saying that the issue is still there. We have very good working relationships with the servicing departments and we will escalate it and ask, can you please go out and see what's going on with this. I believe, for example, in Councilmember Driscoll's district, we had a complaint where somebody was saying there was a pathway being blocked by bushes and they called. And we actually investigated to see. We asked CLIP to please go back out and see because the constituent is saying -- your constituent is saying no, no, it's not cleaned up. And it actually was reading for constituent that it wasn't founded. And CLIP went back out and sent me some pictures to show it wasn't. And I sent to it the individual in your office, those pictures. So we encourage people to call us if what they are seeing not what the reality is.
So our protocol would be to call you back when we get a result that says unfounded.
Okay. And you will escalate. All right. Great. What's the average turn around time on 311 requests? SPEAKER: Each department has their service type, has their own service level agreement, so it varies. And that's something that the servicing department decides how long it should take for a particular service to be completed from the time that we put it in to the time they complete that service.
Who is service? What department or does it depend on what it is?
All right. That's what I'm getting at. All right. I think that will due for now. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a lot of questions also. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: We're going to come back, too. In the meantime, Councilmember Anthony Philips.
Thank you, Chair Woman. Thank you, Jocelyn, for coming here today.
This is a very important topic among residents in the city of Philadelphia and I think we have the ability to get it right. Clearly what's happening with 311 is not working all the way and we have to find a way to make it work better for residents. I think even in our office, you know, I want us to be at 95, 99 percent most of the time. And I think that with 311, I'm not sure if we're at 95, 99 percent all the time. So one of the questions I have is about transparency. Is there a tracking system that allows Philly 311 to monitor whether departments are meeting their service level agreements?
You know, that's a great question. So we're getting ready to implement with the varies departments to have them look at articles of knowledge for us, which include the service level agreement. We're going provide them with what their current service level agreement is and what is the average business day to close, and then ask them to please look at it and see if this is reality realistic, or if they would like to change it. If they do change it, then we will change it in our system as well. But right now we know what it is, we just -- we're not -- I'm not saying we're not, but there's nothing that's officially tracked. So I really want to change that as we go forward -- move forward. Because I think what needs to be done is the SLAs need to be reviewed again, so we're working along with Philly Stat 360 to do this as well.
Great. And actually I see what you're saying, but I just want to quickly follow-up with the fact that -- once they come up with their service level agreements and they might say what's more realistic, we still need the tracking system that's going to be there that's going to be for them.
The tracking system, I'm sorry I didn't say that. That's why we would do it and want to launch this because there will be a tracking system in place.
Okay. There will be. So the next question is what consequences, if anything, is there for departments that repeatedly fail to follow through on service requests?
I'm going to be completely honest with you, Councilperson, I'm not working in those departments. What I would be doing is going right to the head, here, here's what we are seeing.
And is there anything we can do to help? But that's out of -- 311, we are not an operations department. So, therefore, for us to step in and say you should be able to do this in X amount, that's not us.
That's something to think about. Right? We as public officials, we have consequences, our staff members have consequences. It's just the idea of, you know, I think that even the folks that are supposed to be serving folks publicly in these administrative departments there needs to some sort of level of consequences as well. That's not something for you to work on, I guess, per se.
Can I interject this right here? I will say this, since I have been with Philly 311, I do see where the service departments are really concerned about meeting those service level agreements and trying to make sure that they hit them. So I just want to make sure that I'm conveying that it's not something that I think they don't want to do. You know, it's just for whatever reason -- and sometimes they are very good at meeting them. There are some things that are under the service level. So if it takes five days, they may be able to do that in three days, and that's the average. Because we do look at that individually sometime just to pull it to see where the city is at. Okay.
Thank you. And I just have one more question. Can you provide data on how frequently service requests are completed within the expected time frame versus those that experienced delays. And also 311 customer satisfaction is important. Are there ongoing efforts to improve customer satisfaction if someone is upset? Do we call them back or how do we evaluate? If they're telling you they're not happy, how do you reach out to them or do you compile that data on your own and figure out what to do?
So the latter first. We get the survey results everyday from the day before. And right now I think we're at a 91 percent -- 93 percent satisfaction rate within the city of Philadelphia. If we do find that there's a call that's rated, you either get a 1 for yes, they liked the experience, or no, you do not, they disliked it. Then that call is listened to by one of the supervisors, that person's supervisor, the agent's supervisor. They monitor that call, they score the call. If they find that the agent -- there was something wrong with the call, the agent is then coached. If this is consistent then a disciplinary action, that path starts with the agent. If it's a yes, we do the hooray, you did a great job. If it's a no, we will also -- the manager, the supervisor or the agent, if we feel you need to call that person back and you need to make this right.
I want to say I appreciate you coming out today. Hopefully, you know, from this we can find ways to getting better. Because even a lot of our offices are constantly figuring out like, hey, we did right for this month. How do we get better next month? Every time this is about improving for residents in the city. And our hope is that you and your leadership and the rest of your team can take this and figure out how to continue to get better. Because I'll tell you with the unfounded situation, I had -- years ago before council, I had an issue. You know, paint spilled in my driveway, sanitation did it and I put a 311 request and it did come back unfounded. I think it's only because maybe it was the wrong address, it might have been one house over. Are these people -- like -- the reason I had the wrong address, if you look at the vicinity, like just -- I feel if it's not the exact T, they'll say unfounded. It's like are we being efficient in that particular way? So I feel like there needs to be a conversation between 311 and the department saying, hey, there's going to be times where our residents may not have the exact address or the exact corner, but just do your best to do the entire area. Circumvent the entire area for the issue so we don't have to call you to go back out there again. So that's it. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you. Just a real quick point of clarification before I move onto Councilmember O'Rourke. For the 311 survey data that you're saying happens with the calls, are you asking people are they satisfied with 311 services or the resolution 13 of their problem?
311 services. And the reason that when I went that way because when I started there because nothing to ask how 311 is doing. So we're citizens of the city, these are our neighbors, these are our friends, these are our family members and we always heard something negative. I know for myself it was always something very negative for 311. And then once I got into this position and started working for 311, I said, wow, these guys really do do a lot during the course of the day. So I wanted a way to measure what is your interaction, is my agent professional? When they answer your question, do they statement have the knowledge they are supposed to? What is your wait time? That's the question we kind of tank on a lot, but it depends on when you take that survey because our wait times vary based on the time of day. So from 11:00 to 2:00, you may have a wait because a lot of people are on lunch and they're trying to get to the 311, so there's this influx of calls coming in. However, you may call at 2:30 and 3 o'clock, and get right through to us. Because people are at work and not as many people are trying to get to 311. Also, if there's a city event, like a large fire, and then they are saying call 311. Anything that happens in this city and it is said call 311, it impacts our caller volume, and those we have no control over. So that's why I put in place the -- and we just launched this. So it's very, very new, but I'm happy with the 93 percent because a lot of -- I've been doing call centers for a long time. Eighty-five to 90 is usually where people will probably end up at. So I'm very happy with the 93 percent and we're working towards making it better. That's why we listen to these calls that we're not getting scored well to find out what the problem is. Is it an agent problem, information problem or the person on the phone. Because people don't like to hear no or don't like to hear us say we can't do this, but, because we always try to give them an option. Here's what we can do for you so... CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember O'Rourke.
Thank you, Chairperson Landau. And good morning, Director Jones. It's a pleasure to have you here with us today. Member Phillips already kind of hit on my first question. But if you could, if you don't mind, could you actually walk us through the procedures around the service of agreements for updating these agreements and any timelines and policies that are involved.
The servicing department will reach out to us and say, okay, here's a change to our knowledge based administrator. Here's a change, this is what we want to update. And then we update it almost immediately, as quickly as we possibly can. Send it back to and many times send it right back to the servicing department for approval. And then it is put into our knowledge base as a live article. We have some that are archived that are older articles that no longer applicable, however, we don't want to lose that information, so we'll keep them as an archive article and that's how we update. If it's something where its new, they will get in contact with Christina. Christina will get all parties together, let's figure out what it is you want to do, what do you want that article to say, we need the key components. Because our agents, for the most part, are on the phone, so they can't have 50 pages of one thing. So, like with trash pickup. My trash should have been picked up on Tuesday, it's been missed. And the agent is writing this down. It's now Thursday, it was missed, everybody else on the block trash was picked up. That is then something we put into the article really quickly for knowledge based article. And then when the agent goes to use it, we have drop downs, we have every way that we can possibly help that agent to go through a script. And they just kind of have to read it and check off what's correct, what's accurate, and at the end of their call we will recap what you told us. And I know I'm going a little bit further than what you asked. But at the end of the call we recap, the caller, exactly what it is you told us and we will give you the service request number. Now the important thing I think for us to know is that if a customer decides they want to stay anonymous or do not want to give us an email address, there's absolutely no way for them to get updates other than calling 311. You can always call in if you have the service number, we can give you an update.
It's never too much to give more of an answer. It's helpful in terms of clarity what we're looking for. So thank you for that. Our office hears and the data plainly shows that 311 ticket closure rates are seasonal, with the lowest rates coming in the summer and winter months. Can the panel talk or anyone really talk about how data from 311 is used in their department to identify goals and address challenges?
Yes. Yes, related to the issues being raised in terms of what we are hearing.
I can say that when it comes to some winter months as far as calls -- CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Excuse me, I'm sorry. Can you state your name for the record?
So there's certain times of the year where we get specific calls. For example, in February we get a lot of calls related to licenses and renewals based off of when the license and inspections -- license renewal process is taking place, we may get an influx of calls. So we know that so it will allow the call center to prepare and make sure that our knowledge based articles for that specific thing are updated in preparation to take those calls.
And this year when that happened we cross-trained. And we will do that, cross-train other agents so they can jump on. We have an L&I line. Those calls, for instance, can be minutes long 19 because people want us to handwalk 20 them through. And we're fine with that because we realize that License & Inspection is revenue driven. It's going bring in revenue into the city. So we will handhold, walk you through the system if you call in. Because most people who call in are contractors or people about to do work so. Not that we don't treat our other customers with the same. But a lot of times people look at how long does it take to do a call for License and Inspection.
So thank you for that. And if I may, the part around the closure rates happening in the fall or winter months speak to us because it probably has to do with heat or addressing some physical concern that I think should be, I think weighted along the same lines of revenue driven matters. So to the degree if I could, if I could be so forward to advise or suggest, that you do use all that information to figure out how best to form fit your services to all the issue that citizens are calling about. Thank you just the same for your work and all that you do for our city. Madam Chair? CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Chair recognizes Councilmember Squilla.
Thank you, first of all, I want to thank you for the monthly reports that we received. I think it's important for our district to understand the number of calls that are coming, what they are for. We know there's challenges sometimes with either duplicate 311 calls, people calling several times for the same issue or people calling back for the same issue. But what we try to do is when we do get that or get that complaint is actually share the 311 number with the department also. So the department knows, all right, they closed this, yet the people say it's still there or unfounded, but it's still there. Because sometimes as a reporting agency you see it's closed, you think it's closed, you don't know what the department did. But the people think 311 closed it so it's their fault, right?
And I think we need to work closer with the departments that are closing those things and how we can coordinate better with 311 and the end result for the client at the end of the day to see what happened. Because, all right, let's see what happened first before we start casting blame, right? Is there a way when that issue is closed or you sent it to Streets Department or you sent it to L&I, right? And then they have a way of then saying unfounded, got there. You don't know -- can we require them to say unfounded, couldn't get in the location. When it says unfounded, we don't know what happened. Did they just go there and nobody was there, they couldn't get in. Say it was a rental license, for instance. They knocked on the door and nobody was home, so they don't know whether they still have a rental license, right?
That is something and great observation. That is something we are working towards and going to work towards with our servicing department. To make the comment clearer, because if you think it's a challenge for you to have somebody screaming on the phone, and my agent is -- I don't know what this is. And we're running around trying to figure out, okay, what does this mean? Do we need a little more clarity on it? So we are working and the servicing departments are great. They know we have to get it a little more detailed for the customer.
Or do you have to add a field? Do you have to add another option for the service department to put something in? A lot of times when you see something closed it can say "filled pot hole - closed," or something like that. Because you don't know -- if it's closed, did anything happened, did they not find it? Sometimes you don't know.
What we're -- actually the first thing you said, we are asking for more clarity. We will be asking for more clarity in the comment. And then we are also asking if you did do something, tell us what it was when its closed. And we know because we go through those 200 engagements I said we do. These are the same questions that we get from your constituents when we're at that the community events. So for us, also education is a big thing. And this is why we go out in the community so often so we can educate your constituents. Okay. If you do see it's closed and don't understand why, call us, call us. You can always call us back. And once we explain that people are like, oh, okay, I didn't realize I could. Yes, you can always call us back. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: I want to follow-up on this line of thought here because I think this is -- what we're looking at here is the key to helping make 311 even more -- oh, the Chair recognizes Isaiah Thomas, Councilmember, Isaiah Thomas. This is the way in which we can make this more efficient. So when we talked about your survey that you're doing at the end of the calls, and that's to see how 311 did during the call process. I would suggest most people don't really have a problem except the wait time, with how friendly you are on the phone or to help walk them through a process, people are very frustrated after they lodge a complaint either through calls or online that their situation is not resolved, and it's been deemed to resolve in the system. So there they are looking at the pothole, the pothole has been found as unfounded. The only word they have is unfounded and they're still looking at a pothole at the end of the day. I think for the city of Philadelphia, the way to make the system the most efficient is for you, as 311, to have the information from the department immediately upon the resolution of the request, that "found pothole, will have it filled in one week." Done. And that way also it gets immediately tracked through the service -- the service number to the resident part. The reason why is we keep saying -- you keep saying "they can call us back." You already have 1,600 calls a day, you don't need 2,000. And, in fact, maybe those 1,600 calls can go down to 1,200, maybe even a thousand, if there was a good way to have the information at their fingertips. And I really do think this is how the city needs to move because if not, we are double tracking data. We have the Streets Department counting how many potholes they have, how many they filled. And you've got 311 that can look up, these are how many calls we had for pot holes, some call it resolved whether or not it is. Do those numbers match? I don't know. If they don't match, we're miscounting and double counting something that can so easily be put in one particular place.
I believe -- I believe that as things are closed -- maybe not in real time, like if you close a pothole right now, that person, who's in the Streets Department, without any some sort of technology. I think you have to get back to the office. I do not know, I do not work for the Streets Department, but I do know that this information is entered into the system. And that's how, you know, for real time, they would need some sort of technology. This is just me saying that they would need to have something to enter into the system that this pothole has been filled and it would time stamp it or whatever and it would come in, too. And the other thing to remember if the constituent decides that they don't want to give us their contact information, they won't give any information. That's the only way for us to do it. Once the servicing department says that it's closed for whatever reason it is closed, if we have an email address, that email goes out and generates an email stating what happened. That, too, looks like it's coming from 311. So you're right on time, they call 311. So it's 311's problem. If it wasn't done, it's 311's fault. But that email is the other thing that notifies the customer that, hey, this was closed and for whatever reason it was closed the servicing department provides. So I would say it would be some technology in play. And I'm not in any of those departments so I don't know budgetary, none of that, but that's how you would get it real time where I've seen other places done. Where people have an iPad or something that they can walk around with. And when they fulfill whatever the request is, they can right then put it in the system. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Seems like a perfect opportunity to hear to some of the departments. Could you please state your name, for the record?
Good morning, Chair. Aubrey Powers, I am deputy managing director for community service with the managing director's office. And one thing I wanted to share with the committee is that we are exploring ways in which we can improve that coordination between departments. And I'm hearing the themes, you know, just as you have seen in regard to that next step that, follow-up. So we are in the process of exploring mechanisms for those sort of urgent, non-emergency services which really heavily impact the quality of life for our constituents. So just as you stated at the very top, you know, how can you better ensure that our constituents are receiving help instead of frustration. So that's sort of a level above of where 311 is at this very moment, but it's worth that right now. We're heavily involved in exploring what can work best here. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you for that. I think it would be helpful if we had some of the departments come up now so we can understand what's happening when the request gets to their end.
Good morning. Richard Montanez, deputy commissioner of Streets. So as stated, we do receive 311 depending on the problem. We do have specific SLAs for each one of those. For example, potholes are within three days. I do want to remind council, not all potholes are the same. Most of the time when we get complaints are not potholes, are actually plumber stitches that were improperly filled without the Streets Departments notices. So that does takes us longer to do. As a matter of fact, on my ride here today from our traffic shop, I ran into five of them, so it is not uncommon to see. But we do want them to call, we're not denying it. We do switch it on our system when they do come in. What we do is every morning we generate our work log, the crews get routed a certain way and those problems get fixed. Whether it be potholes, streetlights, traffic signals, signage, line stripping, paving. So we lineup the work everyday and we utilize the 311 system to do our work. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Do you have one person who is the liaison to 311 from Streets?
You're talking to him. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Okay. And at the end of the day, are you -- how do you determine what exact -- when do you consider an issue resolved?
So when we close the tickets is when the issue gets resolved. Once Streets Department closes it on their side, then 311 gets a close on theirs. And within Streets it gets a little complicated, whether it's a state road, whether SEPTA property, or other issues that are out there. But when we close it in our system is when 311 sees it closed on theirs. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Do you close -- we're using potholes as an example. Do you close a pothole concern when the pothole is filled or when you determine there's a pothole to be filled.
When the pothole is filled. The crews have paperwork. So everyday they take out the paperwork. There is a clerical person in every one of our districts that their entire job is to input and close out those 311 requests on a daily basis. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Okay. Thank you. The Chair will recognize Councilmember Jimmy Harrity.
So these holes are a problem, especially the ones done by contractors illegally. I have a bill that gets voted on final passage this week. It will pass, which give us an avenue to go after these bad actors, the contractors. We know it's a big problem. I just was a little confused of you guys didn't support the bill. Streets Department actually testified against it. So I'm just wondering why you guys know that this problem is rampant and that most of these things are being done by some of the same people over and over again. So just curious to why you guys felt the -- that this bill wasn't needed when you're saying it's one of our biggest problems.
In reference to your bill, most of the bad actors are the ones not getting the permits.
That's the whole idea of the thing. If they get a permit, that's why the bill fines them when we catch them. Because they're easy to catch because most of the neighbors who actually they're doing the work for paid for a permit in their, you know, their contract.
I'm a highway worker, too, you remember that, right?
Yes. But when we go and ask the resident who had the work done, who did work, they won't give us the contractor.
I need to understand who the contractor is in order to stop all the permits.
It gives us an avenue, that's what I'm saying. It's okay. Another day. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: We will hear from another department. State your name, for the record, please.
Good morning. I'm Ralph Dipietro, deputy commissioner for the Quality of Life Department. Very briefly, L&I uses -- utilizes 311 in a variety of fashion. Not just as the front door to our service, through the complaint process, but we also utilize them to sort of answer the typical and mundane questions about how do I get a permit, where's my local district office. So there's a lot of functionality and things that 311 provides for us. Complaints are probably the No. 1 for at least the quality of life side of L&I. Since we deal with them, we get the majority of our departments complaints through 311. If you'd like I can sort of summarize how our systems interact, if it would be helpful. So basically a service request comes into 311, whether call takers take it, or someone goes on the app or whatever. That's then transferred to our system, eCLIPSE, as a complaint. There's four, sort of, steps or there's four points where we go back to 311 with a status. The first one we're going to do a review. So the complaint is going to come in, it's going to get assigned to an inspector. And the way that happens each complaint is given a complaint code. A complaint code may be property maintenance exterior. That goes to one inspector. The complaint code may be working without a permit, different inspector. The complaint code going to come and is going to be assigned, goes to the inspector, inspector does a review. Determines, yup, it's an L&I complaint, it's something we are responsible for. And that's the first interaction, it let's the system know, okay, it's been reviewed. The next step is its been assigned, the inspector its been assigned to. And the reason we have that separate step is sometimes the inspector that receives it may not be the person responsible for follow-up on the complaint. Or the complaint may have some portions of it -- a real common one is someone will say, well, a building isn't licensed, it's collapsing. Well, we don't want the license inspectors to do that, we want that to go to the inspectors that handle collapse because that's much more pressing. So there's this -- there's this assigned process that happens. And then the next one is probably the one had a causes I would think the most anx for folks because the next one is really the perform investigation or the completed process. And this is where an inspector goes out and/or researches and takes an action on the particular complaint. When I say perform investigation, that may be, hey, we already have an existing case that deals with this particular complaint. So we attach that complaint to existing case. The inspector may go out and say this is unfounded. And I think this is where the anx really ramps up here. In that case it returns back a status to 311 or to sales force that the complaint is closed. And I'll get back to that in a minute. And the other one will be, yup, there's a violation here, we're going to issue notices of violation. So those notices of violation, at that point the anticipation is everything L&I does goes directly onto our website. Almost a hundred percent of our work is publicly available. It's completely transparent. gov, and plug in the address and see the violations that have been written. They can sort of follow along. I think it's probably helpful to spend some time on the unfounded because that's where the anx is. Complaints can be unfounded for a lot of reasons. The common one is an inspector goes out and whatever that thing is, is not in violation of the code. A very typical one will be someone says, hey, there's a lot of people living in this house, it must be an illegal rooming house. The inspector goes out and says, no, that's just a big family. That's an unfounded. It could result in a violation, it's a big family, but they don't have a rental license. So that violation is not necessarily tied to that complaint, although the complaint is what initiated the inspection or the investigation.
So unfounded and for a sense of scale, I'm sorry I don't have the actual numbers, but about a third of the complaints received are unfounded. For quality of life that's around 20-sum-thousand a year. I'm happy to provide the specific numbers, if you'd like. But that's 20,000 or so complaints a year. So a third of those are unfounded. And as long as I've been with the department, that's been the case. And so we've done a lot of different things in order to try to figure out how to better manage that. But for purposes of this I think the unfounded is where folks say, hey, I can see there's a lot of people living in this house. Why didn't they write a violation or cease it or do some other thing. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you for that. And we would love that data, that would be very helpful for us. Do you -- to both of you, do you use the notes function in 311 to put in a short description of the final resolution of the case?
Well, I can -- no, all the work we do -- in fact, there's a subtlety here that's important. All the work we do with respect to the complaint we get from 311 is done on what's called the case file. So if you'll remember the four stages I sort of layed out, review, assigned, perform investigation. At that perform investigation the inspectors determine, yup, this is an L&I complaint, yes, this is something that I would handle individually. Let me go out there, they create a case file. That case file can result in no violations found or actual notices of violation. So all the work from that point forward is done in our case file in our system eCLIPSE. And at some certain points, certain benchmarks it's transferred over to 311. And I would be lying if I told you what it looks like on their end. I haven't seen that in many, many years. But it's transfer over to say, hey, we issued a notice of violation or there's been a cease operation or something like that. So we don't really input anything directly into 311. It's done through an interface between eCLIPSE and Sales Force.
Streets Department uses City Works to track all their work orders and there's an interface between City Works and Sales Force.
City works is our internal database on how we track our stuff. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Does anyone from either of your offices ever meet with 311 even an annual basis?
We do as well. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: All right. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Driscoll.
Ralph, it's good to see you again. I've work with Mr. Montanez more than I get to interact with you now. I guess, maybe both can answer this separately. What's the volume on say an annual basis of complaints? Tickets that come in to L&I, what's the volume that comes in to the Streets Department?
Like how many actual issues are you working on per year on average?
I would have you to look that up. I mean, we get complaints from streetlights to potholes to plumber stitches to line striping to traffic signals. So each of them are tracked and we have to really add them up as to what we respond. We also respond to 311 when it's an issue in the right-a-way, I think it's classified as others. A more specific number I don't have. I would have to go back and run the numbers of the previous year to give you a count.
I could say last year we were close to 60,000 potholes, correct, in the city of Philadelphia, and we're trending that way right now.
And as I mentioned, I'll provide that data and more specifically for L&I as a whole, and then we can break down between the two. But I'm confident that it's in the 20,000. It's very typically 25, 26,000, it goes up and it is somewhat reciprocal. As the wintertime sets in we see fewer, as Spring shows up, complaints explode.
Because your office is getting the 311 notifications, you're getting the council folks notifications to your office. Now you're getting the office of community services -- community engagement, and they're reaching out to you. And then some of it is probably duplicative. So when you open that ticket you can recognize -- let's say all three of us. Say council office calls you, office of community engagement and 311, you'll know right away that you're already working on that issue?
Yeah, we look at the address that got provided. And if it's a similar problem, close enough address, we tend to group them together. But there's always an inspector that goes to verify to make sure it's the same issue. It's not a clerk that groups them together, it's actually the field inspector who groups them together.
And we do. We see who the complainant is, if they provide that information. And then the inspector typically assigned to that area will then look at the address as part of their research of the complaint and they'll typically be able to see there's an existing case file. That's why we have that functionality that allows us to put complaints to attach them to existing case file, which is super important. I know we say it, all the time calling 311 is important, but in terms of enforcement for a regulatory agency it's super important because it's very helpful to be able to -- many of these cases become legal challenges. As I said, a third of the cases of complaints are unfounded. When we do issue case files, over a third of those actually of the case files we issue in total go to court. So it's helpful to say, look, this isn't just -- if you think about what L&I does, this is a very common understanding. One of L&I's roles is to address public nuisances, right? If I hate my neighbor, that's a private -- well, that's a lot of things, but that's a private nuisance, right? When we get complaints from 15 different people and a council person, that really helps our case that this is an actual public nuisance. It's a lot more than just this is a neighborhood dispute. And to the courts that's important information.
And Jocelyn I think said it earlier, that the folks that are callings us, they're our neighbor, our friends, you know, they're citizens. And we're all city employees and we get bunched together that the city is efficient or the city is not efficient. Right? And fairly or unfairly, we get judged on that. And so our intention today wasn't to point fingers to agencies or say we're not getting to things quick enough. We just want to provide the resources that your departments need in communicating with the 311 department as we move into this budget season. We want to make sure that we're prioritizing the city's dollars to make sure that we can help L&I, we can help the Streets Department, when we help 311 where we can because the time to have that conversation is the next couple months. So thank you for being here. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jimmy Harrity.
Thank you, again. Just a question for L&I. I get people calling my office telling me they were kicked out of eCLIPSE. So what would cause somebody to be kicked out of eCLIPSE, so that understand that part. And back then like if they have multiple properties or something like multiple businesses, if they're kicked out of the system they can't do anything with other stuff. Like, say, they have fines on other properties that they're trying to pay, when they're kicked out of the eCLIPSE system they can't even get to their other properties. Can you explain how that works?
Sure. So there's a couple reasons, some are technical reasons. You set up an account, you forget your password. Those sort of things. Typically when folks -- at least in my experience when folks get a stop at L&I at eCLIPSE, it's likely because it's a tax issue. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the time that's what it is. The system was designed, if you remember for those councilmembers that have been here for a bit. If you remember back in the day it used to drive everyone nuts, that we would be issuing permits to somebody that is insanely tax delinquent. It's a tough explanation to make. So eCLIPSE was designed to sort of catch those things. And one of the things we did is we built into the system is this functionality that allows us to sort of expand. Right? We had to make a decision very early on in the eCLIPSE adoption that we were not going to let perfect be the enemy of the good. Right? And that sounds defeatist in some ways, but it's necessary because a lot of the IT projects derail because they try to design the perfect system and in reality they drive themselves into just static and circular logic. So eCLIPSE is designed to check these kinds of things and very often that's what happens. In fact, I can tell you the first year that we implemented eCLIPSE, just the licensing alone, at last count it was about $5-million of back taxes brought in just licensing. So you can imagine what it is with permitting. So most of the time it's a tax or revenue issue. Super complicated. You know you have to contact the Revenue department. 311 has been very helpful in that in being able to give folks, hey, here's how you get a new password. If you lost your password or forgot it, whatever it may be. But revenue is the most common one in my experience.
You're welcome. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: I wanted to go back to, you said you each meet with 311 once a month. What do you discuss in those meetings?
Well, I believe our meetings are actually quarterly. But so there are a couple of different things. One of them is there's always a time to talk about, hey, these are the things we're seeing. And I think someone asked the question about how do we use 311 data in operating the department? We use it a lot. We use it -- and it might surprise 311 how often do we look at that data and say do we have enough personnel, do we need to do something in terms of a program inspection. We use that data quite often. And so we'll talk about some of the things, like the trends that are emerging. Because 311 sort of operates the front door, they got a real good idea of what's going on in various communities. So that's the first thing. The other thing that they'll talk about are like technical challenges. You know, where to fund information, talk about building the knowledge base. There's usually a section where they'll put in -- the result of this is sort of a report that we look at after the meeting is concluded, and there will be a section where they'll say, hey, here's some sort of random comments we've gotten from the public about the performance, what happened, like what L&I did. Usually they're negative, but surprising it's not that the city agencies didn't perform, it's that they didn't get the right information. Now, that's not 311's fault, some of that is L&I's fault. But it's also very difficult to explain very complex processes in a short text box. So we're looking at a couple different things to sort of abate that. But those quarterly meetings take that same format, that a document is produced that's sent out and we use that for decision-making. Is there something going on here that we need to be considering? Do we have the right people in the room? Because like for a department like L&I it's very diverse, right? On one side you have the construction and planning view, a whole separate set of problems. On the other side you have the quality of life stuff. The complaints, rental property stuff, things like that. So sometimes you need to get different people in the room to brainstorm or figure out what this means or what's happening. So it's an ongoing conversation and it's valuable to us both as a department and individually, so that we can get a better understanding of what the public perception is and public concerns are. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Commissioner Montanez?
Yeah, we use it for the same thing, Ralph. We tend to look at trends. We do know the upticks of pothole season, block party permits, things. We use our monthly meetings just to compare this month to last month to last year, just to see where we stand. What's trending up, what's trending down. An interesting one was when we were having issues getting material for our streetlights, that we saw an uptick of streetlights that we had over 10,000 streetlights out in the city of Philadelphia. That was a monthly discussion with 311 and what we were trying to do is obviously reduce the 311 calls. Although we have 10,000 lights out, I think 311 saw over 20,000 calls come in for streetlights being out. So we do tend to take a look at that. And like Commissioner Ralph said, it also shows where we need manpower or where we need additional help to meet our service level. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you so much. Can we have Director Jones back up then? Thank you. Thank you so much for coming back up, Director Jones. Can you please state your name for the record, again?
Jocelyn Jones, executive director of 311. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you. I wanted to talk a little bit more about -- let's go back to the questioning that we heard with the departments. You have these meetings with them. Who do you report -- do you have monthly meetings with somebody in the administration? Who do you report to and who do you bring your findings to?
We all are in these monthly meetings. I believe on both sides, it's mostly the management teams of the various departments. And so there isn't one person that I meet with personally. I'm in those meetings, listening or interjecting from a 311 perspective. I also have someone who facilitates these meetings who is very, very good at what he does, and that is our knowledge based administrator who knows what these articles talk about. And he's also the one who's putting decks, because we literally do a deck every month, and send it out, and then ask for agenda items or tell -- let the departments know this is what we're going to be talking about. So short answer, no, not directly with one person. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Do you meet with the Mayor's office?
No, I do not. Not as of now. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Who do you report --
I'm sorry, Aubrey Powers, deputy managing director for managing director's office. Jocelyn and the team and our servicing departments as well have been working with our Philly Stat 360 team out of the Mayor's office that has been examining these issues to see just how we can improve our ticket closure.
I'm sorry, I misunderstood the question. Okay. I'm sorry. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: And before Philly Stat 360 was coming into place, who did you report to before Philly Stat 360?
The managing director's office and directly in to Tumar and Orlando Rendon was for me orby for me. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: I realize now I was asking the wrong trajectory up to answer the question. Okay. I'm really looking for who's overseeing 311, which is our call center for the city of Philadelphia. It's so important that we launch this entity where anybody can call in and their problem can be sent to the right department or agency to handle it. There's -- it should, you know, resolved and a message coming back to them. And I was curious how you were reporting that information up, who was overseeing your work?
Oh, great. Well, thank you. In terms of chain and command, I, myself, meet regularly with Jocelyn. So where issues need to be escalated, I can escalate those myself or directly from the managing director's office or with the managing director himself. So that's basically how that chain of command operates or works. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: That's very helpful. Thank you. I wanted to get back to the app again, because I think we do have a generational difference between who's using the app and who's making the calls. I wanted to know does your -- how does that work on your staff end? If we can drill down a little bit for the requests coming through the app versus the phone, and how they are also getting sent out to departments or agencies?
The phone, you know, you're calling, you're telling us what you want. The app, the citizen has to go through and fill out the different fields that are on the app. So one of the things for us, Christina will probably love that I say this to you, the app does not allow us to do everything you can do on the phone. So you have to do other and then kind of describe. So that app, once you do it through the app, then it comes into our system, and then an agent works it. We have agents who that's all -- and in our hierarchy, those are agents who are more skilled, they've been with 311 longer, they know the system. So those agents will actually work those cases and make sure that they go to the correct department. Which our goal is to make sure that we are no more than hours behind. So like 19 today, we are today's date of 20 working these cases. 21 Sorry, I don't know exactly 22 how many we have, but I know 23 yesterday when we walked in we had 24 maybe about 600 that were yesterday's date. And we measure this by the date and the actual hours from the oldest case that we're working. Once that case is put in it generates an email that goes out, as long as the customer has provided was contact information. And it will go -- it will go out to that person and email telling them what your service request number is and exactly what we did. Now, say, a case comes in and the agent is looking at it and saying I'm not quite sure what this person is saying. If we have a phone number, we will call or we will email and say, you know, we got your request here's -- we have questions. And if they do it in email, they'll ask what the question is. If they end up having a call, we prefer to do it via email because we find that people who use that mobile app, that's their computer, that's the technology, this is what younger people are using today, so we know that it's very, very popular. So we try to stay with the same communication channel that you reached out to us with. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: And so somebody creates the request in the app, includes their email address. And is there -- you'll send an email like you would also for the call as well. You're asking in the call center for people's emails. You'll give them a basic ticket number and an update through the email, right? How does somebody from the app escalate their request?
Chris, do we have a certain -- I need her because I don't want to say the wrong thing. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you. Please state your name, for the record.
Christina McDonald. For the app mobile or web, if a customer receives that closed email alert stating that their case was closed and they'll get the last comment that was put on the case. If they reply to that email or if they put a comment on the mobile app, on their ticket, that comment will come back into 311 and get routed -- that case is then routed to an agent to review that comment and then respond. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Do you ever keep the same agent on the same case?
We do not. Cases are routed based off of availability. So the agent who is available to take that ticket will respond to that case.
And that allows us to make sure the cases are flowing, you know, quickly through the system, so there's no wait or lag time. Because if I put a ticket in and Christina already has four cases waiting in her queue, and then I'm doing an escalation and it's Christina who originally worked on it, she's going to have to wait. That ticket is going to have to wait until she gets through those other four. When I can be sitting there with two, and so I can get to that ticket quicker. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you. Do -- what are typical service level requests from departments and agencies? Are they time -- how long the department should take to close an issue, close a case? Is it -- maybe just tell me, what is it in general?
Yes, it's usually measured in days and it's how long it should take for that service to be performed from the date and time that we receive it and get it over to them to when it should be closed. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: A lot of the constituents that call our office and talk to us about 311 believe that in order to meet the service level requests, cases are being deemed to closed sooner than the issue is actually resolved. And they believe it's because they are trying to get to the goal of "I did this in three days" versus the resolution it. It might be perception, but that's what a lot of the folks feel.
I think that might be more perception. Because the two largest servicing departments that we work with are both here, and I can tell you I don't -- I do not believe that they're just closing cases to meet a service level SLA. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilperson Jimmy Harrity.
Thank you. On that note that leads right in here. I got a case right here with a tracking number from 311 with a status of closed. Date requested was October 17th, 2024. It was a maintenance complaint, tires. Said it was closed, but the neighbors say that the tires are still there. I have a number and all.
What's -- what is the number? Service request number, do you have that?
Date requested is October 17th, 2024. It was a maintenance complaint L&I, License & Inspection. Resolution: Case concluded.
It doesn't have a date of closed, it just has date requested online maintenance. 3500 Wharton Street, 19146, maintenance complaint, department License & Inspection. Resolution: Case closed.
We can look it up and I won't be able to tell you today, but I can definitely reach out to your office to tell you what we see.
That's fine. As long as you get what we're getting at because this is what we are dealing with here. You know, for us it's a bigger mistake than just somebody at having it. Once we get involved and we tell a person, okay, they did it, and then it wasn't done, it's our credibility. It's our thing. You know what I mean? You told me it was done and I got home from work today and it's -- you know what I'm saying? So just we need to figure out how we make the system better for everybody. This is not -- and, listen, I think you all do a fantastic job. It's just questions because we're getting it. And for me, quite frankly, I'm new so I'm trying to learn, too. So I want to know what the processes are and all that stuff. But for us this is a problem. You know, when something says that it's unfounded and I've been out there and there's trash everywhere. There's a disconnect. When something says it's been closed, it's been done and it hasn't been done, that's an issue for us. So that's all we're trying to get at is how can we, as Mike said, my colleague, Councilman Driscoll. How can we be helpful? What do we do? What do we have to do to improve the system? Does it take more money? Does it -- does it take another system? How do we link all the systems up together so you guys aren't having to do a bunch of different steps, you know what I'm saying, in order to track and keep up. It seems to me right now we have about three system that I've written down for one complaint; you know what I'm saying? So it's kind of -- unless those systems are linked, I get it, it doesn't -- it's not going to show in our system if they completed it in eCLIPSE. You know what I'm saying? So just trying to figure out what we have to do to fix the problem because for us it's about the constituents.
I completely understand and I'm very, very grateful that you guys are even looking into and trying to help us resolve the servicing departments along with 311, how we can make the system better.
Listen, the theory is fantastic, you know what I mean, we just have to make sure it works for our people. You know how it is, you brag about this system that's going to take us into the next level and the people start to call, and the system turns out that it's not quite that system yet. We just need to know what we got to do to get to that system. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Director Jones, I would suggest that the example my colleague just gave shows what we've just been saying is that this isn't perception versus reality. You know, this is not -- you know, this is not a perception issue for the folks who are calling you. They're getting notes that say that their issue has been closed and the reality shows that it has not, and that is the important thing. This is a very important piece of the puzzle that we have to fix. The fact that people get notices that the issue has been resolved and when they get there in real life, it has not been resolved. And for us the answer is not call us back -- call 311 back, not the department. Call us back or submit another complaint or write an email again. They want to know that they put their complaint into 311, it was handled by the city of Philadelphia, and that its been resolved, that's all they want. And this is really, really the crux of what we have to fix. Which might include reviewing -- reviewing the data in a different way. Really looking at who's using the app, who's calling and why? Do we have a better success rate when it's through the app? Are people on top of it more often? Are we double counting calls accidentally because it's coming through the call center and people are calling two and three and four times. 311 was set up to resolve so many of these issues and to take the calls off of the front line of the departments and agencies. I know that, I was here. I remember when you asked us what are the top ten questions that you get when someone calls your office, and you started building from that. You then started to build the knowledge plex that you had of what are -- let's get deeper into the questions people want. What answers do you give? Let's get the easy stuff out of here. But with the harder stuff, the real quality of life things that are affecting Philadelphians every single day, they don't want a note that says closed when it hasn't been resolved. We've got to get deeper into that and look at that in a very different way.
Agreed. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Okay. Questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Seeing no more questions -- so no additional questions for the meeting. Hearing no further questions for members of this panel and no other panels to testify, we will transition to our public comment session. Ms. Hartman, will you please call the first person if there are any for public comment we have to testify this morning.
Good morning. Afternoon maybe now. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Real quick. Could you please -- thank you so much for being here and could you state your name, for the record, before you speak.
My name is Nefertiti Rainer and I've been a Philadelphian all my life, my parents, grandparents and everything. I'm trying to come to these meetings more and these hearings and I can kind of be an advocate for my community because it is a disconnect with the workers and you guys, you know. And as somebody -- I'm a young adult and I see what's going on. And basically from my perspective which is reality, our app crashes. The 311 app crashes all the time, it does not work properly. We have a place in the app where we can add images, but like the example showed, it can say that it's resolved and a proper solution wasn't made. And actually in 311's policy, it states that they can say something is resolved even if they didn't find a good solution for us. So when we talk about rectifying the situation, we have to go to the policies. Because if workers -- and, you know, this isn't to fault anybody. But if workers don't always have integrity and they don't work as they should and they're just, you know, trying to get this data out and we don't have actual real time data to support these statistics, then it looks like stuff is getting resolved and it's not. I've been having problems on my block for a while. At one point I was like there's no point in calling 311 because it doesn't get resolved and you say it doe, and then I'm submitting another ticket and it's pointless. Also, we need an email address to get back to people for the solutions. But my grandmother is 76-years-old, I don't even think she's ever had an email. And if she has, she doesn't know how to get into it. So that's a problem because now where is that going to? Is the person that it's going to for the email address, if it is me, I'm busy with my own requests. Or she doesn't even know what to say when they ask her that or she doesn't know how to work the app. The app right now only has 2.1 stars out of 5. Everybody says the app crashes. So this is a constant problem when the people of the community, their perception -- oh, this is just perception, this is our reality. And to make everything in our communities work better, we have to be able to, you know, communicate these things and have our solutions actually be resolved. Because to hold people accountable you have to actually do work with integrity so that's just my little piece. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you so much. A real quick question, would you rather receive a text back or an email back after you use the app?
I'm trying to thing because I am young, but I also like doing things more formally through email. But I do think a text message comes through quicker. It's me picking up my phone and being on my phone all the time. Most of our working class, they're on our phone, I think a text message is better. Because mostly everybody that's complaining has a phone number so a text message is better. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Thank you. I'd like to recognize Councilmember Jimmy Harrity.
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But one more thing. I think that the app would function better if we could submit requests. Like we can put in a request and put in a picture. I don't know, you guys probably have Amazon. But when they send us a package and they solve our problem with a package, if we have to complain to them and say, hey, my package isn't here, we take a picture and show it back. So I think the app is a two-way thing. It should be them showing a picture that they solved the problem and us putting a picture that we have a problem.
Got it. Okay. My question is real easy. What's the problem on your block and what block is it?
I live on Broad and Hunting Park. So not just the block, the neighborhood. It's trash everywhere, abandoned cars everywhere, my mom's neighborhood as well. Abandoned cars, cars falling apart. It's just trash, it's filthy, potholes, it's all types of thing.
All right. So we need a cleanup. Got it. Broad and Hunting Park. I'm at G and Allegheny, I'm not far. I go passed there all the time. I'll make sure we put a report in. I see everyone behind you writing you. SPEAKER: I don't mean to make you guys --
Listen, you're here, you might as well try to get done what you need to get done. That's what we are here for. Broad and Hunting Park, cleaning and abandoned autos.
All right. Got it. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: And thank you so much for the suggestions of how to better the system. Maybe we can do a public call for suggestions for that so we can gather up some of them, but that sounds like a great idea, everything that you've said.
Thank you for listening. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Ms. Hartman, is there anybody else here for public comment?
There are no 6 more speakers on our list. CHAIRPERSON LANDAU: Okay. I would like to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today. And there being no further questions from members of the committee and no other witnesses to testify on resolution 250059, I will ask if there's anyone else present in this hearing whose name we failed to call and that wishes to offer testimony on the resolution being considered today? Hearing none, I want to thank the panels and witnesses for their participation today, we value your opinions. Do any members of the committee have closing remarks? Nope. Thank you so much. This concludes the public hearing of the committee of technology and information systems. This committee will stand in recess until the call of the Chair. Thank you all very much. (Proceedings concluded.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully and accurately in the notes taken by me of the above case, and this copy is a correct transcript of the same. _______________ Samanda J. Rios