Committee Hearing, December 4, 2006

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA JOINT COMMITTEES ON LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT AND PUBLIC SAFETY - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Monday, December 4, 2006 1:10 p.m. - - - PRESENT: COUNCILMAN JAMES F. KENNEY COUNCILWOMAN DONNA REED MILLER COUNCILMAN W. WILSON GOODE, JR. COUNCILWOMAN JOAN L. KRAJEWSKI COUNCILMAN FRANK RIZZO COUNCILMAN DANIEL SAVAGE COUNCILWOMAN CAROL ANN CAMPBELL COUNCILMAN JACK KELLY COUNCILMAN WILLIAM GREENLEE RESOLUTION 060745 - Resolution authorizing City Council's joint Committees on Public Safety and Legislative Oversight to hold hearings on whether the City should establish a 311 Constituent Contact Center to unburden the current 911 emergency call center and make Philadelphia more responsive to its citizens' concerns. - - - V A R A L L O Incorporated Litigation Support Services Eleven Penn Center 1835 Market Street, Suite 600 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103 215.561.2220 215.567.2670 2

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is the joint Committee of Legislative Oversight and Public Safety. We have members here from both committees, including the Chairman of the Public Safety Committee, Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, Councilperson Joan Krajewski and Councilperson Dan Savage, and myself, Councilman Kenney, who is the Chairman of the Legislative Oversight Committee, along with Councilman Goode, who is a member of the Legislative Oversight Committee. Today we are having a hearing on Resolution No. 060745, which is a resolution authorizing City Council's joint Committees on Public Safety and Legislative Oversight to hold hearings on whether the City should establish a 311 Constituent Contact Center to unburden the current 911 emergency call center and make Philadelphia more responsive to its citizens' concerns. 3 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 Good afternoon. Today's hearing will examine the benefits of implementing a 311 Constituent Call Center in Philadelphia. In 1997, the FCC designated the code 311 as a non-emergency police and other government services telephone number. While the 311 classification did not obligate municipalities to implement the non-emergency number, it provided the option. Since then, many cities have instituted 311 call centers that provide the public with easy access to all government services and city information. Cities with 311 call centers are able to service their constituents more efficiently by dealing with individual problems and by tracking calls to recognize neighborhood and citywide concerns. Furthermore, cities with 311 call centers can use this system as a 911 backup and in conjunction with the city's 4 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 emergency office for events and crisis situations. While Philadelphia has numerous departments and programs to assist constituents with service needs and information, navigating through the web of City phone numbers can be overwhelming. In some cases, the difficulty in contacting the appropriate department may even discourage residents from seeking help. In addition to the multitude of City numbers, Philadelphia burdens the 911 emergency call center by directing non-emergency calls to 911, such as noise violations. 28 million calls, many of which were not emergencies and could have been handled by a 311 call center. Certainly this added stress placed on 911 operators' responsiveness to real emergencies. From the City's perspective, the current system is inefficient and 5 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 outdated. The lack of technology limits the City's ability to utilize the information collected through calls. Under a new system, information could be coordinated to create a comprehensive tool compatible with identifying trends, ongoing problems and concerns among residents. And the response time to combatting these concerns would be much quicker with one central database. These factors highlight the need to streamline our City's accessibility to benefit constituents and improve City responsiveness and insight. I'd like to thank Lisa Allen from the City of Baltimore and Kristin Gonzenbach from Dekalb County, Georgia, who are here today to offer insight into how a 311 call center can transform constituent service into a tool to improve quality of life for City residents. We actually have three witnesses. One will also be Deputy 6 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 Commissioner James from the City's Communications Department. We also have written testimony submitted by the City of Chicago, the City of Columbus, Ohio and the City of New York, who also have similar systems, and that testimony will be offered for the permanent record. In addition, we have Councilmember Rizzo, who is also here to listen to testimony. So I'd like to call at this time Lisa Allen from the City of Baltimore to please take the witness stand, identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, everyone. Again, I'm Lisa Allen and I'm the call center Director for the City of Baltimore under Governor-elect Martin O'Malley. I have in your packet a PowerPoint presentation which you can -- I kind of follow through, but I kind of go off the beaten track. If you have any 7 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 questions, again, feel free to ask. But you mentioned in your testimony --

I'm sorry. Is someone operating the --

No. I did it this way so it would just be easier for you.

Okay.

Just for a little history of the City of Baltimore, we actually received a grant in 1996 from the Department of Justice, who they were studying the impact of 311, what it would have on 911. So Baltimore was the first city to actually use 311 as a non-emergency number, and we advertise urgency but not an emergency. And from that grant, we found that when we first -- we kicked it off in October of 1996. We found out that immediately once our constituents got familiar with 311 instead of 911, it actually took a third of the calls off of 911 and decreased the hold times almost 50 percent. So really, 8 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 in essence, 311 in Baltimore in '96 was used as a non-emergency number. When Martin O'Malley came to office as the Mayor, he ran on the platform of accountability. So he told the constituents of Baltimore that he promised that he would make the government accountable and he would know just how long it takes for city services and things like that. The Mayor had a few goals. It was to make Baltimore a safe and clean city; increase the educational, cultural, recreation opportunities for children; create stable and healthy neighborhoods; strengthen the economy; and, again, make government responsive, accountable and cost effective. Now, that was a little different than how government used to run, because we kind of knew what we had to do and we kind of had City Council hearings, but he really wanted to put some numbers to those. So to do that, he 9 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 came up with some tenets, which was accurate and timely intelligence shared by all, rapid deployment of resources, effective tactics and strategies, and relentless follow-up and assessment. Now, that was kind of new. You'll see on the next page the old government tenets that the City of Baltimore maybe when I go to places and talk, I see people shaking their head like, Yeah, that's kind of how we do things or used to do things, but remember the things that said -- if the Mayor really wants to know, we can find out, but we got to take all our people off their jobs, and hopefully we can compile that information by the next fiscal year, because we had to go around and look for those numbers. And it will take a while, because you know budgets are always cut, and they were cut last year. " "We tried that and it didn't 10 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. " Those, again, are all government tenets. " So one thing that the Mayor said is, he had to compile all of the city services and information so that we would know what we were looking at in one system. We actually started a CitiStat process, which is in the back of your packet, which I will go over a little bit briefly, but really the call center was a by-product of the CitiStat effort. And CitiStat really looks at every aspect of Baltimore, every call that comes into the center and how long it takes to do that call. Again, in the old days, we had what we call call-takers all around the city in the various departments, in the Water Department, in the Department of Public Works, in the Health Department. They worked from 8:30 and I say to 4:15, because around 4:15 we had to start 11 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 getting all our stuff together so that we could go home by 4:30. They really answered the phone. They went outside and smoked a cigarette and came back and answered another call. Or if it was Sue's birthday, they all got up and went to lunch with Sue. So there was no way to really capture how many calls we were getting into Baltimore and what people were asking for and how long it was taking us to respond to them. So, hence, beginning in March of 2002, after months -- it 15 took us 18 months, because it mandated 16 that this process be done in 18 months -- 17 the first call was taken in the 311 call 18 center. And to do that, we had to share the number with the police, because they had already been using 311.

So now when citizens call Baltimore and they call 311, they get three options, either they wanted 911 for an emergency, they wanted 311 for non-police emergency or they want No. 3 for city services or other 12 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 information services. And you'll find that when your citizens get used to calling 311, they'll call it for anything. They call us and they ask us who the Ravens are playing on Sunday, how to get to City Hall. So they ask a lot of questions once they call 311. And our mission is that they can answer one call to City Hall. So we do make sure that we try to resolve all of the issues that our callers have. We only transfer five percent of our calls in Baltimore, and most of those transfers go to health services where there's confidential information that needs to be taken. So when a customer or a citizen calls 311, we actually create a service request, and you see samples of that service request in your packet. And after any and all service requests -- we have about 300 -- and people still call us and ask us some miscellaneous things, we give all of our callers a service 13 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 request number. We encourage them to write it down, because we also give them an estimated time that it would take for us to complete what they've asked for. If they'd like a dirty alley cleaned, we tell them that could take about days. 8 Well, after 17 days and one minute, they 9 can call us back and give us that service 10 request number and we can let them know 11 what's going on with that call. 12 So it's kind of a cycle. Not 13 only do we keep track of what the 14 citizens are wanting, we also keep the 15 agencies accountable by measuring how 16 long it's taking them to do that, because 17 they then have to go back into the system and they have to take that call and tell us exactly what they did with it. Sometimes calls can't be completed because gates are locked, for example, and they can't get the bulk trash or whatever there is for the customer, but we can let them know that, because the agency goes back into the 14 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 system and tells us exactly what they're going to do. So really, again, I want to just stress that the CitiStat process really was the first process for Mayor O'Malley's accountability program. And, again, to go through the CitiStat process very quickly, it was those four: accurate and timely information, relentless follow-up, deployment of resources and effective strategies. By having a call center in Baltimore, we really use that information to know all of the stuff. We can put the workers on the spots where we're getting more calls for specific services. And before we had a call center, we really didn't know. We're able to compile that information in one neutral spot, which is separate of Department of Public Works, which is separate of Department of Transportation. Again, it's the Mayor's Office of Information Technology. So we want the work done. 15 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 No longer do customer service agents give you really solutions to these issues, but they do take your call in professionally and courteously, and we do track those calls. So, again, just to go -- if you later go through your slides, you'll see really the CitiStat process and how the call center partners with CitiStat so that we can actually have accurate and timely information. We map things. We can take the service request number and the service request type and we can put dots on the map to where these customers are calling and what they're calling for. So, again, that allows managers to track performance and it also makes sure that we're doing good customer service. So we gather the information, we've analyzed the information, and we found that there are quite a few benefits to have a consolidated call center, because we want our citizens to be 16 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES.

060745 treated like customers. If our citizen base moves out of the City of Baltimore, then we have no tax dollars to do our work. I know you all understand that. We improved service delivery. We consolidated about 200 phone numbers, literally. I don't know about Philadelphia, but in Baltimore, we had the White Pages, and you had to skim through all those White Pages to find out exactly who you needed to call, and a lot of times you had to make two or three calls and that was after you called your Councilperson because you felt that was the only person that can help you. And now in Baltimore even our Councilmembers, when they get calls from constituents, they ask them for their service request number, because if you don't give us a chance to try to do it or give the agency a chance to try to at least fix the problem, then it's kind of not fair to call your Councilperson. Let us try to 17 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 handle it. We improved and made visual agency performance levels. So we're able to tell our constituents we know exactly how many of this call we get a month and we know exactly how long it takes by average to get this call completed. So we just really feel like we improved customer service. Now, customer service and service delivery are two different things, so the call center still partners with the agency, because we rely on them to do things. In our experience, when 311 first came out in Baltimore, 311 was blamed for everything. " It does work, because we got your call. We have it in a centralized location and we know exactly when and how long it took to be done. On the same token, we partner with service delivery. That's who we make sure that we partner with to make sure that it's done. 18 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 5 million. 6 million. A million dollars of that, though, is on our ASP or our system at Motorola so that they can govern and they can manage our CitiTrack system or our electronic system where we capture all of the information. We feel through the process of the call center and the CitiStat process that we really have saved over three years $70 to $90 million, and we count this in by overtime, by knowing that we're effectively deploying resources to where they need to be. So, again, all of this information is housed in the call center. We get about 4,000 calls a day. The Mayor's office now does answer also 19 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 the police non-emergency call. Our abandonment rate is less than two percent, and we answer all of our calls in less than five seconds. I've concluded kind of all of my information. If you look in the back of your packet, my e-mail address is on your last page. You can feel free to e-mail me if you have any additional questions.

Thank you very much for your testimony. I'd also like the record to reflect that Councilwoman Carol Ann Campbell and also Councilman Kelly have joined the panel. Could you tell me how Baltimore informed its residents of the existence of 311 and also how did they encourage citizens to use it and understand what its purpose was?

And, again, in Baltimore, we were pretty lucky because we were already familiar with 311, but it 20 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 was for non-emergency police situations at first. So they were very used to 311, so we really didn't have a lot of budget to lay out for this fancy campaign, and so our biggest advocate was the Mayor. The Mayor is on television two or three times a day, and even now he'll still tell our citizens whenever he gets a chance to make sure they call 311. Sometimes he tells them to call 311 for things we don't do, but we can truly direct everyone to the right place. So really we didn't have a lot of advertising layout. And I'll give you another little secret that we did that I share with other cities. Those 200 or so phone numbers that we had, we analyzed them, we pointed them to 311 and we also disconnected quite a few of them and put recordings to call 311. So even though some of our residents were very used to dialing ten-digit numbers, they could dial that ten-digit number, but they were 21 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 coming into the call center.

The sheet that you have relative to the costs involved, start-up costs and annual operating costs, how did you come to the conclusion that the cumulative benefit over three years has been a $70 to $90 million savings, as the first costs?

Sure. The reason we kind of -- and that's a universal Baltimore statistic that we say, and we really think the benefit is more. But when you start in the benefit of the CitiStat program and then have the call center actually recording every call, making sure we've documented that we've reduced overtime, we've made our employees more efficient because we've taken that information that we get from the call center and we deploy our resources where they need to be deployed. We've changed -- I don't know if you call it trash boroughs. We've changed that, based on the number of residents that 22 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 call, the number of residents that want a type of service. So we're able to know that we've reduced overtime. We've made our troops more efficient, and we've also cut down on operating costs in having calls going all over the place and then having to get those calls all together. So that's kind of how we come up with that.

Have you found, for example, in the Streets Department, do you bundle kind of your pothole requests, for example, into one area so that the trucks go out in one area and do maybe 15 or 20 at a time as opposed to filling a hole, going back, going to another section of the city, doing something there? Are you able to coordinate the actual completion of the service requests in an efficient way because you have the information?

That's exactly right, because by our citizens calling into the call center, it's also a work 23 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 order management process. So our agencies out in the field can also access our CitiTrack system and they can better deploy their resources and schedule their work. So it does eliminate the back and forth.

Is the system centralized or is it spread out throughout the city? Is it in one location?

The call center is centralized in one location, but everyone in the city has access to what, again, we call our CitiTrack system, which is just the name for our customer service management tool. Anyone can put in a service request if the need arises. So it is accessed all over the city, but our calls are taken in one central location.

Approximately how many call-takers or customer service reps do you have, and do you run it three shifts of eight hours or it's only available certain times of the 24 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 day?

No. Our center is open hours a day, seven days a week, 5 365 days a year. We are split again into 6 two segments. One is city services and 7 information, and the other is police 8 non-emergency. 9 We have about 47 customer 10 service agents for city service calls and 11 30 for police non-emergency. And 12 depending on the time of day and the day 13 of the week, you'll see the variation of 14 customer service agents on the phone. 15

Is the 16 information that's generated shared with 17 District Councilpeople? 18

Yes, it is. In 19 fact, we've actually trained the City 20 Councilpeople to go into CitiTrack, and 21 we have developed very easy queries where 22 you can actually see everything in your 23 district, because we've broken them down 24 into district.

And, 25 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 finally, before I move to another Councilmember, have there been customer satisfaction surveys or constituent satisfaction surveys, and what have been the results, and how often do you try to gather information on satisfaction in order to tweak the system?

I'm glad you asked that. We do do a customer satisfaction survey, where a group in the call center makes outbound phone calls to ten percent of the service requests that were closed the previous day. We just ask three simple questions. First we ask how your interaction with the call center was, then we ask did you think that your service was done in a timely manner, and was it performed at all. So we do typically score very high on all three. If we come up with a person that says, No, my service request is closed but I'm still looking at that pile of trash, that call is immediately escalated to the deputy of that 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 department or agency, and they have hours to get back in touch with my agency with regard to what happened. And sometimes it's new trash, sometimes it is that an employee may have closed something out with the intention of doing it the next day, which is not the way we do things.

For this 11 round of questions, I'd like to end with 12 me and then go to Councilwoman Miller, 13 who is the Chairman of the Public Safety 14 Committee. 15

Hi. Good 16 afternoon. 17

Hello. 18

Thank you 19 for coming. 20

You're welcome. 21

I have a 22 couple of questions. Customer 23 satisfaction, have you gotten any 24 feedback from District Council or Councilmembers, and how has this system 27 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 either helped or improved --

Well, I have to be honest with you --

-- their office?

-- at first the Councilmembers weren't really gung-ho about the program, because they were used to wanting their constituents to call their office, but that really wasn't the most effective way to do things for either the city or the Councilmembers, because you all are very busy with doing other things. But it is very -- it's been very well received now. It took about a year or so. And I'm a very candid speaker, which is why I speak in a lot of places. It was very difficult at first to get 311 off the ground in Baltimore, but what I tell other cities and even people in other countries is, you must have the Councilmembers and the leadership behind you. And Baltimore was very successful in doing this in 18 28 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 months because Martin O'Malley, who now, again, is the Governor-elect, but the Mayor, Martin O'Malley was very adamant about this being done. So the Councilmembers now are very much -- and not because of the Mayor, but they see the benefit now of how they can really service their constituents. And as I spoke of before, they can literally look in our system and look right in their district and see what their major concerns are in their district that people are calling about. So they really like it.

So I guess it's decreased the number of constituent service calls to the Council offices, because now I guess it's more shared between their office and 311.

They still get their share of calls, but to make it easier, they are on board with asking, and even their assistants and administrative assistants know how to put 29 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 in a service request, so they are in tune to asking, What is your service request number or Do you have a service request number. I don't think it cut down on the amount of calls to the center, but I think it did cut down the amount of constituent calls to City Councilmembers, because they do give the city a chance by calling 311 first.

And how long have you had the 311 non-police?

Non-police started in 1996, and it was at first answered by off-duty, retired, light-duty policemen. Then we shared the number and opened up city services in March of 2002. And then in an effort to get policemen back on the street and also make sure that customer service was consistent throughout the city, we took over the answering of the police non-emergency as well in July of 2005. So 311 was in the city since 30 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 1996 as police non-emergency and then it spanned off into city services in March of 2002.

Okay. Thank you.

Does your system have the ability for a 911 call-taker to immediately transfer a call to a 311 number if in fact, one, they're starting to hear the request, they know it's a barking dog and it goes elsewhere?

We do. In fact, when the Mayor asked -- we started studying about the Mayor's office taking police non-emergency calls, that was a big issue. And believe it or not, we can transfer between 311 and 911 very easily, and that call actually goes to the top of the line and the 311 agent is to stay on the line if it's a 911 call until the 911 operator answers. But the percentage of that happening -- and we didn't know at first, and it was a concern that we did not have trained 911 operators possibly 31 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 getting ready to answer a call from someone that accidentally pushed 311 instead of 911, but the percentage has proved to be very, very low.

Councilman Rizzo.

Thank you. Thanks for coming to visit us.

You're welcome.

I want to go to the costs associated. Years ago we had a non-emergency number on all the police cars, I think it's 231-3131, a seven-digit number, which basically relieved the 911 system. Nothing in technology today is quite expensive. Could you tell me what your local telephone company charges you a month for the 311 system?

And that comes up a lot. We are charged per call in Maryland. I know a lot of states you may hear a charge per call. Also, because 311 piggybacked off of the police 32 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 non-emergency number, we were protected by some homeland security costs and supplements and things like that. I will keep in mind and forward to you the exact breakdown of how that works. I don't have it with me offhand.

Every telephone subscriber -- and Joe James can shake his head yes -- residential and business, pay a dollar a month for the 911 service, and I know when I was looking at this many years ago, that Verizon, our provider, indicated there would be significant monthly charges, maybe not per call but a fixed charge. In our city, we must have a dozen, without exaggerating, customer service units, Water Department, Streets Department, this department, that department, and I know the Administration was talking about developing a customer service operation. That I like, where we can collapse all the customer service operations into one, push for water, 33 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 for this, and have an expert that really knows how to deal with everything, but if there's a specific issue, they can have a person that has a lot of experience in the area of water. Just having a 311 system that would relieve police, I'm not in favor of that, but if we could develop a customer service operation with tracking -- and we could do that with a seven-digit phone number. We have a City Hall switchboard, 686-1776, which could accomplish the same goal if we chose to develop a customer service operation. And 311, if that's going to spread throughout the country, it would be nice if we had visitors that would know if they needed something, they have 311 that might not know about a seven-digit phone number. But I think that what I'm hearing today is good if our plan would be to incorporate all of the various operating departments like you mentioned, I think you used the word customer 34 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 service representatives, that would be able to handle almost everything. I mean, our utility company, PECO Energy, has both gas and electric, and when you call, you can get a representative that knows a lot about gas, a lot about electric and be able to satisfy the customer. So I'm pleased to hear that, and maybe when Commissioner James comes forward, we'll find out what exactly Verizon would charge us a month for that service. Again, thanks for enlightening us.

You're welcome. And I have been in cities where they've chosen 311, but I've also been in cities where the city was made up of various municipalities and they had to use a ten-digit number. So the idea of how it happens works even if it is another number. The idea is just to consolidate all the calls into one central location. 35 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745

I believe that that was the initial plan. We have a switchboard that answers the calls -- this is the funny part. You call City Hall and you say that you want to report a pothole, like Councilman Kenney said, and they immediately just transfer it off to the Streets Department. Wouldn't it be great to be able to call 1776 and have the person that answers the phone say, Can I help you, I'll take care of that problem?

Absolutely.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much. And, again, from a subjective political standpoint, I know that there may be some concern that a reduction in the flow of calls to a District Councilman or At-Large office may have some negative political implications, but I would argue the other side is that a 36 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 better service with a happier constituent makes us all in better standing with the public as opposed to trying to troubleshoot normal constituent service requests through the use of the political process. We don't mind doing it. It's part of our job, but I've heard people ask many times before, Why do I have to call a Councilmember to get a trash bag picked up. It shouldn't be that way, but we will accommodate them and make sure that bulk trash gets picked up. But something like this long term may wind up giving city government a better reputation and all of us who run it a better reputation than the way we do it now.

And I have to tell you, from my perspective, that is exactly what will happen. Again, I work very closely with the City Council President, and constituents call the City Council. And really what you all do is, you all have a direct number to the agency head. 37 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 It kind of frees you up to make sure that, again, give that caller a chance to get it done. Because sometimes I know you all get calls where if they didn't give you a chance to get it done, they're just so used to calling you, and I know -- I mean, I'm a public servant, too. I'm out in the public all the time trying to satisfy all the constituents of Baltimore. But, again, it gives you a chance to look and see exactly what's going on in your district, because you don't have the ability or time to consolidate all of these calls from your district.

Have you also found anecdotally whether or not you can nip rumor problems in the bud when it comes to people calling for the same request? I've heard this, I've heard that. If it's in one particular neighborhood, what was -- I see on blog sites now, "What was that helicopter hovering around my house, the police 38 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 helicopter, for two hours last night? What was that all about?" And as being able to go someplace and get an answer as opposed to whispering down the lane and it becomes even more of a problem potentially than getting a direct answer to someone. Have you found instances like that?

Yes, we do. And we do have, especially in police non-emergency, the exact instance that you're talking about, and sometimes it's nothing, but sometimes constituents are concerned. And even if we haven't been in the loop, they can call us and we can at least get the information and call them back. Also, in gathering specific calls for specific types -- now, I know people don't like and they say sometimes this is kind of like -- and I'm using this cliche -- the "big brother" syndrome. We can identify and have even been asked by citizens to identify 39 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 certain addresses that they have the same problem over and over. So we can look at that crew and see is it something you're not doing in this address or is it something the citizens need to be educated about. Recycling, we had a whole borough that it looked like we just got a whole lot of calls that their recycling was missed. Well, after some looking into it and calling some of our customers, we found out they had a wrong sheet of paper and they were putting their recycling out on the wrong day. So it goes twofold. We also can educate our citizens and things that we find that may be a problem.

Great. Thank you. Any other questions for Ms. Allen? Councilwoman Miller.

Ms. Allen, how often do you monitor? 40 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 When you just said we're able to look at and make an assessment that so many calls are coming in, does that happen daily or is it ongoing?

It happens daily, but depending on the situation, I often say when I talk to agency chiefs, if I manage the agency, it's realtime. I would look at it all the time. But depending on the agency and the frequency of what they do, they have different requirements in the agency to when they look at this. But it's realtime. As soon as a service request goes in, it is in the system, and if you wanted to pull up the Water Department -- we have a lot of water main breaks in Baltimore. The infrastructure is very old and here comes the time of year where it gets cold, hot, cold, hot. They can look realtime and see how many water main breaks we had through this cold spell or from when we went last week from 70 degrees to 30 41 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 degrees and they can look that right up. So it's realtime.

And you still have a switchboard, though, do you?

We do have a switchboard. We have talked about several times rolling that switchboard into 311, but the office has dwindled down a little. I think there are only like seven switchboard operators now, and their main function is, if you wanted to really call and speak to an agency head in the City of Baltimore, you would need to go through the switchboard and they would be able to put you in touch with their assistant or the Councilperson's assistant instead of going straight to their phone. It's not that we're not trying to make these people accessible, but if you call 311, if you have an issue and you want to speak to an agency head, you'll speak to a customer service supervisor first, because they can at least gather the information for the 42 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 agency head or the Councilmember and look at the system and see how many times this person has called before you're hit blind-sided with that call. So our switchboard is now really open standard hours, Monday through Friday. They are also in place for other internal purposes. If I were to call and say I needed to speak to an agency head after hours, they would contact and patch us together. That now has really turned out to be their major responsibility.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Allen, for your testimony. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Kristin Gonzenbach, please. Are you going to do your testimony from there? Because do you need to operate your -- 43 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745

I'm so used to standing when I --

Whatever you're comfortable with.

Can you hear? Yes, you can hear me. Thank you for having me here. My name is Kristin Gonzenbach and I work in Dekalb County, Georgia, and we are very excited to have been invited to come up here and happy to tell you a little bit about our 311 implementation. And what's going to differentiate my presentation from Baltimore is, as you heard, Baltimore was the very first 311 implementation in the country and they've been around nearly ten years now. We're in the process of our implementation. We're live with our pilot, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. But some of the questions that you've come up with already, you might see some answers in my presentation. So I just want to tell you a little bit 44 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 about us. We're part of metropolitan Atlanta. Part of the City of Atlanta bleeds over into Dekalb County. 1 million. We are the most diverse county in the State of Georgia, speaking over 64 languages, and we're also adjacent to Hartsfield, the largest airport in the world. We're home to the second largest airport, CDC, GBI headquarters and FBI and IRS regional headquarters, and we also have nine major facilities in Dekalb County. What most citizens are familiar with in working with their local government is what we call decentralized confusion. And you see here a citizen tries to call and ends up getting bounced around to different departments before hopefully they get their question answered or their service request resolved. But I want to give you an 45 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 example of something that happened to me this year. I live in -- I won't name the county, but I don't live in Dekalb. I live in the adjacent county, and I wanted to renew my firearms permit. It expired this year. So I went to the Blue Pages in our phone book. And Probate Court is who handles firearms permits. So I called the Probate Court number that said "Firearms Permit," and I got a recording that was a four-minute-long recording telling me how to acquire a marriage license. I had no option to opt out of this recording or to speak with somebody. I couldn't press zero. It was just this recording. So I figured, well, after they get done with the marriage license, they'll tell me about the firearms. After it got done with the four-minute-long how to get a marriage license, they hung up on me. " That phone rang and rang. 46 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 Nobody answered it. " They transferred me to a voice mail when I told them what I wanted, and the voice mail gave me directions to call another number. Now I've called four different numbers so far and I haven't talked to anybody yet. So now I'm getting amused because I can't believe this is happening. And so I started writing all these down. So I called the number that the voice mail told me to call and it gave me directions -- led me to another voice mail to call another number, which led me to an IVR, which gave me directions -- this is a true story -- to call another number. The seventh phone call I made, seventh, a person actually picked up the phone and I got the answer to my questions. So this is what happens typically in a local government. What 311 is going to do for us is, it's going to give citizens a single 47 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 point of contact. So you call 311, the citizen calls in. They either have their question answered, like I had a question about how to renew my firearms permit, or they have a service request. It's a single point of contact for citizens to call their government. Why 311? Well, I think that Lisa did a great job explaining why 311. The only thing I want to highlight right here is, on average 75 -- this is a national statistic -- 75 percent of all incoming calls that come into 311 centers are handled within the call center and never leave the call center. What does that mean?

To you that means that 75 percent on average -- and Lisa said in Baltimore it's 90 percent stay in the call center, which is incredible. That means that 75 percent of the calls that are coming in from citizens are handled. They're either informational calls and they're answered and resolved in the citizens help center or a service request 48 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 needs to be filled out, and the CSR, the customer service representative, will fill out the service request and send that service request to the appropriate department. So what the recipient department is getting is a service request. They're not doing all the front-end work, which was what they were doing before, which was answering the call from the citizen, filling out the service request and then dispatching to the appropriate road crews or whatever needed to be done. So now all that front-end work is being resolved within the call center, so the recipient department gets to focus on their core business functions rather than having to do all the front-end work, the customer service work, plus filling in the information. And I want to point out right here this increased revenue stream, and I know I'm going to get some questions on that, so let me see if I can answer that 49 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 in a minute. And, again, I handed out a packet which you'll be able to have to look at later at some of these things of why we would use 311. Here's some anecdotal information for you just to give you a frame of reference, and you might be able to use this within your own city. Our Recorders Court is basically municipal court and handles traffic and minor citations. Our Recorders Court takes in about 420,000 calls a year. Of those 420,000 calls that come into this one department, we answer about 90,000 of them. An additional 50,000 calls are abandoned during business hours. So in the call center they get about 140,000 calls during the day that are trying to get into the system. What was really interesting we found out is that Recorders Court operates 35 typical business hours in the county. Two-thirds of the calls that 50 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 were trying to get into the system were coming in after o'clock. Two-hundred 4 and eighty thousand additional calls did 5 not get through, did not get a response, did not get answered because they were coming in after 5 o'clock and nobody was there, and they just -- the phone just rang and nobody was there to answer them. Well, I found out that they only had three call-takers trying to handle 420,000 calls, and obviously they were successful in answering 90,000, which I think is pretty remarkable for three people. And what's interesting about this department is that 75 percent of the people that are calling into Recorders Court want to know the answer to one question, how much is my ticket. And if we can tell them that, we might be able to get our money sooner and we might be able to get collections on municipal traffic violations that we may not ever collect. I am not proud to admit that 51 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 Dekalb County has $20 million outstanding in traffic warrants and citations, and most of that money is going to be uncollectible, because we don't have a really efficient way of tackling the outstanding warrants. We don't have an appropriate method of collection, and so that's a problem. But if we could answer these calls, particularly the 280,000 that are coming in after business hours, we might be able to start making a dent at that $20 million that's outstanding. I wanted to point this out. Because we haven't implemented Recorders Court in our 311 center yet, so I'm not there yet as far as being able to answer the after, but I can tell you this: Houston implemented 311 in 2001. In June 2001, they went live.

Within two months of going live, their Municipal Court, which is the equivalent of Dekalb County's Recorders Court, started seeing a spike. It was in Municipal Court collection of a hundred thousand dollars 52 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 a month. That hundred thousand dollars stabilized. And so they had a platform where they were collecting, say, $10 a month in Municipal Court, and then all of a sudden, that amount of money that they were collecting jumped by a hundred thousand dollars, whatever their baseline information was, and it continued to be consistent over time. Now, can I say that that was because of the implementation of 311? Not really, but isn't it an interesting coincidence that within two months of their implementation all of a sudden they're taking in an extra hundred thousand dollars a year?

Monthly.

Pardon me?

A hundred thousand a month.

I'm sorry. A hundred thousand a month. Exactly. Which is wonderful. So the Dekalb County 311 vision 53 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 then became what you see up here on the screen. Now, what I want to point out about Dekalb County and what we decided to do with our 311 implementation is, Dekalb County, as far as I know, is the first county government, non-consolidated county government, to implement a 311 system. Historically all the implementations have been at a city level. But what we decided to do -- and I know that the City of Chicago also uses their 911 center as -- I'm sorry; their 311 center as a 911 back-up. Dekalb County, for different reasons that we'll talk about later, has decided to also use their 311 center as a multi-functional facility. Chicago uses it as a bifunctional facility, in that it is a 911 back-up, which they have had to implement. They have had to implement their 911 back-up center in Chicago at least once that I know of. And we've also decided to turn 54 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 our center into a third function, which we call an Emergency Facilitation Center, and as a part of our homeland security strategy in Dekalb County, we have decided to take the 311 center and use it as widely as we can as a resource. So for an incremental increase in costs, we can turn our 311 center not only into a back-up 911 center, but we can also use it as this Emergency Facilitation Center. So, for example, say there was some kind of catastrophic event in Atlanta, there was a Syrian attack on MARTA, we had severe flooding in South Dekalb or some major flu epidemic that was just creating havoc in the county. What we could do is, we take out the call-takers, the generalist call-takers who sit in the chairs. We put in subject-matter experts, whether it's Public Works officials, Public Health officials, and now citizens can call 311 and speak with a subject-matter expert while the emergency is occurring, and the 55 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 subject-matter expert will be on the other end of the phone and tell them where to go, what to do, how to treat. We're also working with GEMA, which is Georgia Emergency Management Agency, as well as we have a task force, a homeland security task force, that we're -- a regional task force that we're working with, which includes all the major hospitals, et cetera, to further develop our Emergency Facilitation Center. So we're getting the biggest bang for our buck in the development of this 311 center. What I want to talk about a little bit is what we in Dekalb County have coined the 311 culture, and what that is, is 311 -- we need to look at it as more than just implementing a call center. We're doing a lot more than that. And not only Dekalb County, but anybody that implements 311 is doing more than just putting in a call center, a place for somebody to answer phones. 56 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 311 affects how you do things in your department now, and what that means is that the way that we currently interface with the public is going to change as a result of 311. How so? Well, I just told you that we're going to take 75 percent of the call volume off of your department. So if you have a call center in Dekalb County -- we had eight independent call centers in the county and we're consolidating them or reducing the staff in most of them because of the 311 center. And so what does that mean? That means the people that were answering the phone and doing all that front-end work are no longer going to be doing that. We're going to give these people an opportunity to work on their core business functions. So what does that mean? That means we need to look internally within our own department and say, Okay, this is the way that we do things now, but how is that going to change in the future when 57 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 311 becomes our new administrative assistant?

And that's really what you're doing, is all these departments are now -- they're getting a partner, and that's called 311. 311 is partnering with them to take all of this front-end work off of them and let them focus on what they do best, filling potholes, whatever they do. We let them focus on what they do rather than having to do all the front-end work, which a lot of people end up doing that weren't hired to do that. They weren't hired as receptionists. They weren't hired as call-takers. But everybody, from a receptionist all the way up to a department manager, ends up answering phones and dealing with customers and working with them to resolve their issues or their questions, and that takes up time. We talked about saving money. When you think about all the time that you're not spending and your staff, 58 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 particularly in the City Council or, in our case, the County Commission, their staff spends about 80-plus percent of their time trying to look up information for citizens that could easily have been handled either within the 311 center or it could have been light follow-up work for a staff member in the Commission office, because all the information has already been done in the 311 center. They've accessed the system. They find out what the customer needs and they can resolve it, or they can contact the departmental representative fairly quickly and get an answer on the phone rather than having to do two days of research to find out who the person was that the citizen talked to and try to work through it that way. So we need to look at it from a departmental perspective, Public Works department, your Public Health. Every department needs to be looked at. We need to reexamine the way that we do 59 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 business, because it's going to change. One of the most important things in the development of a 311 center is the knowledge base. Your 311 center is only going to be as good as your knowledge base. I am not a Sanitation Department worker. However, I should be able to answer every question or just about every question that comes into 311 for Sanitation. If the knowledge base has been supplied with the significant information from that department, I should be able to answer those questions for them. They shouldn't need to go to Sanitation to be answered. You don't have to be a subject-matter expert in every department in order to have it be good at the 311. Councilman Kenney, I think that you asked a question about, because I wrote it down, about an event that occurred. I wrote down what you said, and I want to answer that question for you. You talked about clusters and if 60 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 there was a special situation that came in. Say there was a water main break and you were getting cluster calls or something like that. What we do in the 311 center is, we have what we call a "Hot News" page, and what the CSRs, if something comes in -- we just had a 48-inch pipe burst about six weeks ago, and the Water and Sewer Department called us up and they said, This whole area is out of water, no water is going anywhere. We had hospitals that were out of water. We had to send fire trucks over to hospitals. We had a huge problem. What they did was, Water and Sewer called up the 311 center. Our liaison in 311 said, I need you to get this information out to the citizens because they're going to start calling. So what we did was, we very quickly front-ended an -- I don't want to say an IVR. A voice response onto the 311 and it said, We've had a big water main break in this area and we're aware of it and we know that nobody has 61 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 water right now and we're working immediately to try to remedy it. If you need further information, you can press zero, or whatever, and you'll get a live person. But there were several thousand calls that came in in that afternoon when it happened.

Of course, it happened about 4 o'clock in the afternoon when everybody wanted to go home. But what happened was, when these calls started coming in, most of them were handled with this front end. And we have, like I said, a "Hot News" page, so when a CSR logs onto their system, they can see what's going on that's happening right now, a problem in an area, we're having roads blocked because of a parade or whatever. They can take a look, so when the phone calls come in, they can say this is what's going on. When it's no 23 longer hot news, what they do is, they just take it off. So that's a way to get to that information. 62 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 Process improvement. My boss, I report to the County Manager, and he says that 311 maximizes the opportunity to implement enterprise-wide process improvement. We talked about that a little bit earlier regarding every department as they roll into 311 really needs to take a look at how they do business and how it's going to change as a result of 311. I told you that 311 in Dekalb County, we're in the roll-in process right now. We're in the second part of Phase III in our development right now, which is a county-wide roll-out. We have 46 departments in our county. We've got eight rolled into 311 currently. I've got eight more being rolled in as we speak, and we go live with the 311 phone number -- and I'll talk about that in a minute -- in June of next year. So right now we're doing the ten-digit dialing. All of the departments that are rolled into our 63 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 pilot call center are being routed through the ten-digit dialing. So citizens go in the Blue Pages, look up the phone number for Water and Sewer or Sanitation, roads and drainage, and they get filtered right into the call center right now. So a little bit about our pilot program, what happened. We had four departments that we initially rolled into 311. And somebody at one of the -- I'm sorry. I'm going to call you guys Commissioners because that's what I have. One of the Councilmen said earlier that -- I think it was Mr. Rizzo -- asked about the main number, if you still had a switchboard in Baltimore. One of the first departments that we rolled in, if you want to call it a department, was our switchboard. So we had four county departments, plus the county information line was the first group rolled into 311. So all of our -- ours is 371-2000. All of our county information calls are now 64 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 being filtered into the 311 center. So we no longer have a switchboard even though we're not live with the 311 number currently. So we have five departments that came in, and what we did -- and we're talking about process improvement now -- is, we hired a consulting firm to come in and help support these initial roll-in departments as far as how their processes, business processes, were going to change as a result of 311. I only had enough money to do three departments, and I had four departments rolling in. We didn't do the county operators. They didn't really need to change in the process because we were eliminating them, eliminating the positions. So I only did three departments, helped them with their as-is and to-be business processes. What happened? That fourth department blew up on us. Unfortunately, I didn't spend the money on one of my 65 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 high call volume departments, which is Sanitation, and we started getting about a thousand calls a week for Sanitation, and by the end of three weeks being live, our service requests were backed up by over 3,000. We also didn't do a very good job of getting information into the knowledge base. The other three departments actually was a fairly smooth transition, because we went through this back-end work with the department to help them renovate their business processes.

This department in particular, Sanitation, did not really fully engage on their own. They weren't forced to engage because they didn't have that support staff working with them. They didn't understand a lot of how the service request would impact their daily business, and they just -- we just had a lot of difficulty -- they weren't trained properly. They didn't understand how the service request, if you didn't close them 66 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 once you performed the work, how that wouldn't go back into the 311 system, and so we've got all these open service requests when, in essence, some of them may have been closed. We couldn't keep track of that, because they just weren't functioning properly. And one of the things it says right here, that the people in Sanitation did not factor time in their day. They're all busy people. The supervisors are out in the streets with their road crews and everything, and they never made time to work on closing out these service requests. One of the other things that it's a phenomenon that will occur to everyone is what we've dubbed the water hose versus the fire hose delta, and I think I explained that a little bit when we talked about what happened in Recorders Court. We have three call-takers in Recorders Court, our Recorders Court answering phones. Four-hundred and twenty thousand people 67 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 or 420,000 callers are trying to get through every year, and we're answering 90,000. And that's just what we're able to count hitting our ACD in our phone system. That's how we've tracked these numbers. Now, what you need to understand is that we may take a look at one of your departments and say, Okay, you've got about 5,000 calls coming into the system a year in your department, so I need one customer service rep to handle those 5,000 calls from this department. But what we don't know is what is trying to get through that's either getting a fast busy signal or not able to get through. So you've got a water hose right now, but you don't know what the universe is of callers trying to get through. And one of the things that we learned during our pilot program was that Sanitation had five call-takers in their call center and they were handling 500 68 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 calls a week with service requests, 500 calls a week with five callers. Well, I think I mentioned a few minutes ago Sanitation -- or in the 311 center after we went live, we were getting 1,000 calls a week. So what happened? Well, I went from having five people answering telephones to 21. So now I can take the universe of calls that are trying to get through to that system. And that's something that is going to happen to every single department. You don't know what you don't know. You know what is hitting your system because you can measure that, but you don't know who is trying to call who is not hitting the system and they're not getting through or they end up calling -- we have one -- I went and spoke to the Tax Commissioners' offices. I went around the county talking to all the departments about our implementation early on in the process, and the Tax Commissioners' office, their call center 69 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 people I spoke with, and they were just thrilled that we were going to be implementing a 311 and they said, Oh, good, now we won't be getting those Water and Sewer Billing calls anymore. And I'm like, Why would you be getting Water and Sewer Billing calls? Because we have a Water and Sewer Billing call center. So the lady in the call center, she said, Because they can't get through to Water and Sewer Billing, so they call us because they know we'll answer the phone. And I was just like, I just can't believe that.

Because our Tax Commissioners' office has the second largest call center or had the second largest call center behind 911 in the county and they are usually able -- they are able to handle their incoming call volume. So people just want to talk to somebody, and they'll even call people 70 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 they know can't help them just so they can talk to somebody. So what happened here with Sanitation is -- I showed this picture earlier how everything is supposed to be so perfect. They call into the call center, the citizen calls. We get the information to the county departments, and then we close the loop here with the service request being resolved. But what happened was, it didn't work because Sanitation didn't go through the process of renovating their back-end processes, and services suffered as a result. Best practices. What we did, after we did our pilot program and we learned from the different things that happened within the pilot is, we decided to do a departmental checklist to start preparing the departments a little bit better for their future roll-in, and these are some of the things on the list that we worked very closely with the departments on to acquire this 71 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 information. One of the big things, departmental ownership. If the department head is not engaged in this process, it's going to be very difficult. Some of the departments were sending liaisons to -- we had weekly meetings as their departments were being rolled in, and if the department head wasn't engaged -- the department head was the decision-maker and would tell people stuff that needed to be done, and they'd say, Okay, and nothing got done, because the department head was the only one who could make a decision or the deputy or whoever. A decision-maker wasn't involved. And so one of the things that we require is that the department head be engaged in this entire process. One of the most interesting things that we learned out of our pilot was that after cut-over, you need that engagement of a high-level manager. In Parks and Rec, which was one of our 72 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 initial departments that we cut over, one of the deputy directors used to go into the CRM system, which is the customer relationship management tool that we use within the county for 311, and he would go into the system every day and see what service requests were outstanding in Parks and Rec, and if something that he thought should have been done that day or should have been already handled and it wasn't resolved, he'd call up the party responsible and say, Why isn't this service request resolved? And so it became what we dubbed this phenomenon after him. We called it the Marvin Billups effect, because he was paying attention, and at the end of the week, he would go home on Friday with no service requests open. And it was that engagement with the high-level management within the department that made their department very successful in the earlier stages of this, and he's still very engaged as well. 73 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 One of the things that I wanted to talk about is just the methodology that you choose for implementation just needs to be calculated. You need to have a plan for implementation, an approach, and follow that approach. And we're following our approach, but we're tweaking it as we add more departments, because we're learning from our experiences before. I think you brought up about public education and marketing. Critical. Critical to success. One of the things that happened when I was doing all the research on the development of our 311 implementation, I visited a couple 311 facilities, one of which was in Chicago.

And I was going from one city building to another city building, standing on a street corner with about eight other people at a traffic light, and all of a sudden, this city bus went by me and on the side of the city bus, it said "Escaped convict, dial 911. Escaped 74 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. " And I'm standing there by myself, and I swear -- I was there to observe their 311 center and I saw this, and it just struck a cord with me. I got hysterical. I just burst out laughing. And I'm standing on the street corner by myself, and everybody on the street corner was looking at me, because it was almost like they had orchestrated this bus driving by. And I said, That's it. I said, Now I know the difference between when to call 911 and when to call 311. And when I got back to Atlanta, I called up the director of the 311 center in Chicago and I told them the incident, and I said, Do you have any more of those? I said, They were great. I said, That was great. So he gave me these other ones. Marketing is critical to the implementation, because if citizens don't know to call 311, obviously they're not going to call it. One of the major problems that 75 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 we saw and that Baltimore and every other implementation around the country has seen is that nationally 50-plus percent of the calls that come into 911 systems are non-emergency police or customer service calls. And that's horrible, because the one time that somebody needs to get through with an emergency call, they're unable to get through because somebody is calling about wanting directions to the Falcons game or how to get around traffic or something that is really not an emergency or police, fire, medical emergency. So we really need to -- we've developed a marketing campaign to get the word out. And another thing that we learned is that it's not just a front-end thing that you have to do. You have to continually talk about what 311 is. It's not something that you can just do as you go to implement. You have to do it ongoing. 76 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 Another question had come up about -- and I think it was Mr. Rizzo that brought it up -- regarding Verizon, your Verizon and how much the costs were going to be for the phone system. In metropolitan Atlanta -- and I had talked to your staff about how the City of Philadelphia was set up regarding this -- we have overlapping central offices in the phone system, and what that means is the COs, or the central offices, that affect Dekalb County -- we have of 14 them -- only three of them have Dekalb 15 County phone numbers in them. 16 Twenty-three of them have other 17 jurisdictions' phone numbers in them. 18 The way the state tariff 19 structure is set up in Georgia -- and 20 this is something you need to look at -- 21 is that it is impossible to fully 22 implement 311 anywhere in a metropolitan 23 community because of the overlapping 24 central office issue. And what happened 25 was, the PSC was only going to give you a 77 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 certain percentage of the COs that affect your jurisdiction, which means nobody could fully ever implement 311, which obviously was not an option, and it's an issue. So when we learned of this a couple of years ago, what we did was, we convened a consortium of metropolitan Atlanta communities called MAC 311 to study the existing tariff structure and to try to figure out a way around it so we can implement 311 in our community, not only in Dekalb County, but any other metropolitan area faced this same issue. So what we did was, we came up with the need to create a location-based routing solution in order to fully implement. And I don't know if this is going to affect you, but you need to know about it, because depending on the tariff structure in Pennsylvania, I mean, your Public Service Commission or Public Utility Commission is the one who assigns a 311 number to your jurisdiction.

78 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 We are now in the process -- we had to go out to RFP and to come -- we hired a firm to come in and create a 911-like database. So, in other words, when you call 911 in the City of Philadelphia, you don't get Dover, Delaware's 911 center. You get the City of Philadelphia.

If you're in an area near the county line or near the state line, you sometimes get that bleed-over on occasion.

Okay. But usually these 911 databases are about 96 percent accurate, and that's what we're going for here. But what the point is, is that a database has been created in Philadelphia and in every city and county that has a 911 center. And the database, what it does is, it pulls out your jurisdictional phone numbers. We don't want your adjacent communities, because we don't serve that community and we can't help you if you're calling for an 79 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 ambulance. So we've built a database as you have and everybody else has that for 911 that picks up your phone numbers. And, like I said, most of these databases are about 96 percent accurate. You can also feed in numbers and pull out numbers on a case-by-case basis if you need to. So what we've done is, we've hired a firm to come in and create a 911-like database that does the same exact thing. It extracts our numbers out of the COs, leaves behind Gwinnett's and Atlanta's and Fulton County and Rockdale County. It leaves behind their phone numbers, so when they go to implement in the future, they'll be able to take those same phone numbers. And all this has to be approved by the PSC, but it's the only way around the tariff structure. It was the only way that we could get around that and be able to serve our entire citizens. So how do you choose a 311 system? Now, in talking about the system 80 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 itself as far as what kind of a tool you're going to use, a system tool, what we did was, we looked at every implementation that was live in the country and we asked what kind of a system that they were using. So we got to know who all the players were, who were the companies that sold CRM systems and was that what we wanted. And then we hired a vendor to help us implement the system, somebody who had experience in implementing 311 systems. But basically what it comes down to is, what are you looking for. And it's really important, because there's a city in this country that they got 18 months into their implementation -- it wasn't us, because we're a county -- they got 18 months into their implementation and about $4 million into their implementation and they realized they had purchased a work order system and they wanted a CRM. What the difference is, is a work order system 81 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 will take information for a service request and get it to the department. What a CRM is, a customer relationship management system, what that is, is it's a broad range of what it can and can't do. And some of the things that Lisa talked about earlier about being a management tool, departments can take information, pull information from a CRM system and extract management information to help them prepare for their budget for future year. "We had an increase of 14 percent since last year in this area. " Maybe we 16 need to know when we go to budget that we 17 need more work crews because we're seeing 18 a significant increase in work volume and 19 we're not able to handle it in a timely manner. If we have 72-hour turnaround for a pothole, it took us two weeks to do it last year and this is why. A CRM system will allow management additional tools to be able to work better. A work order system does not have that 82 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 capability. So you need to pay attention to what you're buying, because what happened with this city that I mentioned, they were months into their implementation 7 and they said, Well, this isn't what we 8 want. We want to be able to get this 9 management information so we can track 10 trends and identify clusters and use it 11 as a management tool for doing better. 12 And they said, Well, that's not 13 what you bought. You bought a work order 14 system. That's all it does, is create 15 service requests. 16 They ended up firing their 17 vendor.

They scrapped the tool that they 18 bought, the work order system, and they purchased a CRM and then hired another company to implement that. So you can imagine how much money they wasted when they just didn't plan enough to understand the difference between a work order system and a CRM. Now, I know you were interested 83 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 in how much it costs to implement, and our information is fairly current because we're still implementing. But we broke this down into four phases, and what we did was, we hired a vendor to come in and help us implement during the first three phases, and then in the beginning of March of next year, the county will take over with what we're calling Phase IV, which is continuing that county-wide roll-out. So what we paid for in Phase I, which was the plan to implement, was, we paid 264,000. And then the pilot, which was really the design and build of the call center, design and build of all the CRM configuration and then also producing the pilot roll-out, was the most expensive part of the project. 3 million on that. So we're looking at about $5 million as far as our implementation costs for start-up, and I believe that 84 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 the department is going to run us -- I think Lisa said about $4 and a half million they spend annually. That's probably not too far off base. In addition to the development, you're going to have to think about staffing models, and we talked about the water hose versus the fire hose. And what you need to do is, call-takers or the amount of people that you're going to have answering phones is going to be dependent upon your call volume. That's why the water hose/fire hose was so important, is because we have to try to grasp what we don't know is trying to get through. And so there's different kinds of formulas that you can calculate, but the staffing costs are in addition to the costs that I outlined on the last slide. So that's something that you have to keep in mind. Currently, we have 22 call-takers. We have eight departments implemented right now. In our pilot call 85 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 center, we're going to be able to build out to about 35 call-takers before we have to move into our permanent facility, and the permanent facility is in the same building that we're in right now. 911 is going to be moving out in about five or six months into their new facility, and we're going to be taking over the 911 center and building it out for 311.

Were those employees current county employees that came from various departments?

I'm sorry?

Were those employees that were staffing the call center with the four departments that you have now, did they come from those four departments?

That's a great question, because we learned through the school of hard knocks, and I'd like to save you the pain here. What we did was, we transferred positions, people, from those pilot departments. And what we do, 86 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 every time we roll in a department, depending on their call volume, we're taking a staffing position from every department. And then if you have a high call volume, we're taking more. For example, Water and Sewer Billing is a very high call volume department, about 600,000 calls a year. We just took seven positions from their call center and moved the positions into the 311 line item. What we did in the pilot was, we took bodies, we took people, and that was a huge mistake, because there was a lot of resistance on those people who were forced, pulled away from their department and thrown into this unknown place called 311. And they are very resentful and they've been -- most of the trouble that we've had with CSRs in the call center has been from this core group of people.

Did you hire additionals? 87 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745

Well, what we decided to do was take positions, vacant positions. What we did, we would take from Department A and move it to 311. And we are also hiring additional staff as well. So it's about a 60/40 split. Sixty percent of the positions are existing in the budget for the county and about 40 percent of positions are actually newly created positions, CSR positions for the 311 center. So we're absorbing 60 percent of the positions from existing budget money right now.

Did you have union issues, jurisdictional issues?

I'm sorry?

Did you have union jurisdictional issues?

No. We're a right-to-work state.

Oh, okay. That's a different world.

I know. I come from New York. 88 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745

Because I envision here in Philadelphia different AFSCME local jurisdictions that govern various departments. So, for example, if you were moving an employee out of District Council 47 in Philadelphia and employees out of 33 into a call center, who would represent them, or would they just continue to be represented -- you don't know the answer to this, but would they continue to be represented by their --

If you can take vacant positions, that solves a lot of the problem. And we typically have a vacancy rate in every department and so we just started pulling positions. And also, in Dekalb County -- I don't know about here, but Human Resources is able to reallocate positions. So, for example, a Grade 19 is what a CSR is. If you don't have any Grade 19's, you can take a 21 or a 23 and reallocate it down to a 19, and then we take the 19 into 89 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 311. So we're able to do that as well. We have to go through HR to do it. One of the things that -- I wanted to bring up funding sources, because everybody is always looking for money. How are you going to pay for this is a question. Oh, by the way, somebody asked about Council resistance or Council approval as far as 311. Our County Commission is so excited about 311, I'm overwhelmed. When I had to go back to the County Commission -- because they've approved every step of the way. Every single phase we broke down, I went before the County Commission on every single trip to ask for the money to approve to move forward with the next phase. And so the County Commission has been very informed in this entire process, and they love it because citizens love it. And citizens are already coming up to them and saying, Boy, this centralized call center is the best thing since sliced bread. And also it's quite a proud 90 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 moment for our Commissioners who frequent different events and different events with leaders from other counties and cities in the State of Georgia as we sit in the State Capitol. And they all know about what we're doing in Dekalb County, and people are saying, Wow, you're doing 311, you must be really cool. And it's very -- it's a proud moment for the Commissioner to say, That's right, we're bad, we are the first in metropolitan Atlanta to implement. We had the guts to move forward, and we're doing it and we're doing it in a great way and we're doing a great job. So they are 100 percent behind this implementation. And you can call any of them and ask them, and they'll tell you. I mean, I work on the sixth floor with the Commissioners, so I bump into them periodically up there and they always are like, 311, we're there. They're just really happy. Funding opportunities are 91 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 available if you use your 311 center as a 911 back-up, and we are, and we've taken advantage of those funding opportunities. Because if you're operating as a 911 back-up, 911 money is available to you. Reallocation of funding due to efficiency and effectiveness improvements, consolidation of redundant resources. We had eight call centers. Now we're going to have 311, 911 and the Tax Commissioner. The Tax Commissioner is a constitutional office, so they're going to do their own thing, and that's fine. All the other call centers are going to be consolidated or reduced. Water and Sewer Billing, we're reducing that because we're going to still have customer-specific needs that have to be addressed. So we'll still need people to handle those service requests as far as personally. Homeland security money, we're using our facility as an Emergency Facilitation Center. It's part of our 92 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 homeland security's plan, and so there's money available out there for that part of what you're doing in the 311 center. Senator D'Amato in New York got $650,000 for two different towns in New York to help them start with their 311 center. As soon as I saw those press releases, I printed them off and wrote to my Senators and I said, Senator D'Amato did this for New York, can you do that for us? So there's earmarked money that is available if you have a very loud and persuasive Senator and successful. And there's other grant opportunities that may become available.

Right now the State of Georgia is going to put a bill 19 together that is talking about the scope of its 911 and how some of the emergency management money can be used. And I got a call from one of my State Reps and he said, I left it in there to make it loose enough that you can slip in grant opportunities out of this one. So I'll 93 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 be following this bill through the session when it starts in January, and I'll probably be lobbying for it to hope it passes, because that would give us an opportunity to go for grants at the state level. We talked about the reassignment of positions and consolidating positions. We just took seven positions out of Water and Sewer Billing. They're not getting them back, period, done. So that changes the budget. Plus if you've got people doing front-end work plus doing back-end work, if you look at a lot of these people's job descriptions -- and I'm not talking just about departments that have call centers. Everybody is a call center. Everybody department is a call center, because we all take customer calls. We all respond to citizens. So we're all call-takers. We're all CSRs. If you are able to focus on your core business function and instead 94 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 of 40 percent of your time you're spending on the phone talking to customers trying to calm them down, talking about issues, you're not working on your core business, which creates inefficiencies in your operations. That is resolved through 311. An enhanced revenue stream, talked about that. If I can turn my Recorders Court and be able to answer these 400-plus thousand calls that are coming in and I can tell people how much their ticket is, I have a greater opportunity -- and I'm just talking about one department now. If I can answer the calls -- I'm got Water and Sewer Billing. We boast a 99 percent collection rate in our Water and Sewer Billing Department, but what we don't tell you is it takes us almost six months to collect that. What does that mean? That means if I can get customers who are calling to find out what their water bill 25 is, to find out what their court fine is 95 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 and I can tell them, I have a greater opportunity for payment sooner. I may get it eventually, but I'd like it tomorrow instead of six months from now. And, of course, the old General Fund is always the best way to fund your 311 system when all else fails. But we are exploring all different kinds of opportunities, as anybody else can. Where we are right now, this is our current status: We're operational. We have people answering phones. 14 We're going up to 35 by the end of Phase 15 III, which is going to be the first of 16 March we'll be up to 35 call-takers. 17 We'll have 17 departments rolled into 311 18 at that time out of 46, and most of those 19 are your very customer-facing 20 departments. So some of the departments 21 that we roll in later will be minimal contact with customers, like Internal Audit Or Finance. Some of those departments have very little customer-facing opportunity, so their 96 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 departments won't be as significant as we roll them in as far as call volume. We're answering about 1,200 calls a day with eight departments right now, and we're using the ten-digit dialing, and I told you that hopefully June 1st we're going live with the 311 phone number. It's all up to the Public Service Commission. I go before them with our call routing solution in two weeks or less, ten days. So I'm crossing my fingers that we get the assignment on that date, that is. Our call routing solution, I told you what we had to do in order to fully implement 311. That will be complete in the first quarter of next year, and all of the telephony work is done. This is a work chart of our call center.

That's something that is very -- this is a typical work chart in a call center, and it's working well for us. We're going to be hiring additional 97 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 supervisors, because I think you want a ratio of like eight to one or something. So we've got an additional supervisor position in the budget for next year, and we're also hiring an additional trainer. So we'll have two trainers, two supervisors and 35 call-takers.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I just have a few initial questions. I don't know if you're more comfortable sitting or standing. It's up to you.

I'll stand.

What type of information sources do 311 call-takers access to have the information available to answer a wide range of questions? I mean, if I was a customer service representative out of the Sanitation Department and I was removed and reassigned to 311, what areas of information would I be able to access there that can allow me to answer a question about the Parking Authority or 98 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 the Police Department or the Personnel Department?

If you were in Sanitation?

No, no. If I were a current employee of the county and I was one of the people that you brought over to 311. So now I'm answering questions not only about Sanitation, but I'm answering questions about the police, I'm answering about Personnel, I'm answering about applications for employment. What base of data do they tap into to be able to answer that question they wouldn't normally know the answer to from experience?

That's part of -- the 311 center is called a knowledge base, and that knowledge base starts off empty, and that's why the roll-in process that we are taking with only tackling four or eight departments at a time is extensive, because we sit 99 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 down with them and we need to know what are your standard operating procedures, what are your frequently asked questions, what are the things that we need to know about your department so we can answer a question just as you would. So it's up to the individual department, in your example Sanitation, to answer these questions and supply the information to the 311 analyst to populate the knowledge base with everything we need to know about their department. And it's kind of a live and learn situation as far as you're never going to get a hundred percent of the information. You do as much as you can, and then I'm going to get a phone call in the 311 center that isn't in the knowledge base, so we write it down. We send over a service request, and then we say, you know, is this a question that we can just answer in the knowledge base so that service request doesn't come to you. And typically it is. 100 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 So the knowledge base is a very fluid being inasmuch as things become important or pertinent or we have a policy change or a procedural change. We pull out what was in there and we put the new information in there. So that is your living document of how a person coming off the street, a generalist call-taker, becomes an expert in everything around the county, because the individual department populates that knowledge base with the information of how they do their business.

So each of your call-takers can answer any of these questions if it's in the knowledge base?

Absolutely.

So they're not segregated, where I'm doing two departments or three departments. I'm doing them all.

Correct.

The other issue relative to cost that you raised, 101 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 how long ago did you start the planning process and how long did the initial planning process take and was that inclusive of the $264,000 in costs?

No. I was given the assignment. The CEO -- and this is another thing that's critical to a successful implementation, and that's executive-level support. If your CEO, your Mayor, is behind this, it will be successful. The CEO in my -- a CEO is like a Mayor in our county, a strong Mayor form of government at the county level. And when he took office in 2001, he wanted to become the customer service county known for its wonderful customer service, and as a part of that, he wanted to implement 311 in Dekalb County. And when I started working there in August of 2003, my first assignment was, Go implement 311. So I said, Okay. I said, What's 311? And so it was up to me to answer that question. So I basically 102 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 went underground, and my researchers and I, we spent six months learning about 311. I visited Houston. I visited Chicago. I called every implementation in the country, including Lisa's former boss. And if I didn't visit there, I talked to them, and I learned everything I could about it. We spent six months doing research. We learned everything we could about everything, how it was done, and then we decided what was going to work in Dekalb County, because what works in Chicago may not work in Dekalb County. So we needed to figure out based upon our environment what was going to work best for us. So during that time, I also got to know who in the industry as far as vendors go could do this, who had a track record and who was successful. So part of my research has to do with what kind of system are you using. I wanted to know. And then who implemented, who did 103 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 your implementation. So by the time we got to the point where we were ready to write the RFP, I already knew who the players were in the industry. I already knew who the top people were who could help us with this. And I already knew what kind of -- well, the system was chosen for us. Dekalb County is an Oracle shop and so I was told when I was given the assignment, You're going to implement Oracle CRM. So I said, Okay. So I just wrote that into the RFP. "We are implementing this system. If you can't implement Oracle CRM, then don't bother applying." Most people don't have the system chosen for them. We happened to have it already done for us, which worked out great. But as far as how, that's what we did. We just did all our homework so we had that -- and then it took a couple months to write the RFP, because we had 104 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 to decide -- we decided what our vision was, and then we wrote the RFP based upon the vision.

Now, did you have consulting help while you were doing your research or was it all staff work?

No. It was all in-house.

And how long did it take from the time you were given that assignment to the completion of the RFP?

I finished the RFP in May. I started the project in August, doing research, and then it took me two months to write the RFP. And then it took purchasing six weeks to get it out, which was very painful because we were trying to move forward.

Six weeks here would be a light year.

Well, this was a CEO project, so it was on the front 105 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 burner and so I wanted it turned around like right away.

And you thought six weeks was a long time?

Yes. For being a priority project, yes, I did.

I'm not laughing at you. I'm just laughing.

I get very impatient. When I get something off my desk, I'm ready to move. And so we started -- the RFP went out July of 2004. We had a vendor chosen at the end of August. By the time contracts got signed, we started December 1st. So we have been working for two years.

Okay. And besides Baltimore and Dekalb County, what other systems impressed you throughout the country, which other --

Implementation?

-- cities that have an active 311 system? Whether 106 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 it's in one phase or two phases or three phases, who would you recommend, besides Baltimore and your place, that we should look at as a model?

Houston, Chicago. When I was doing my research three years ago, the top three that kept surfacing, whether it was in a publication, a journal or word of mouth by phone calls, those three systems came up as the best, Baltimore, Houston, Chicago. There are several others. What we were looking for was a comprehensive implementation. We didn't want a work order system. We wanted comprehensive. We wanted those management tools, like Baltimore is using.

What does New York have?

What does New York have? New York has Sibel. (Ms. Allen talking without microphone.)

The 107 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 stenographer can't hear you.

Okay. She said Hansen, H-A-N-S-E-N. I would have to get you the information. I don't know the answer.

I'm just curious whether --

No. I'm curious, too, because I thought I knew the answer to that, because I know most of them. You hit me with one I don't know.

Those three are worth looking at?

Pardon?

These three are worth looking at, Houston, Chicago and Baltimore?

Oh, absolutely. Actually, Dekalb County decided to model their implementation after Houston because of the robustness of their application.

Thank you. 108 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 Questions? (No response.)

I'd like the record to reflect that Councilman Greenlee is also in attendance, so that the record is clear. Are there any other questions for this witness? (No response.)

Thank you very much for your comprehensive presentation and for giving us some benefit of your knowledge.

I also wanted to -- well, I want to thank you for having me, and I also want to welcome any of you to come and visit us in Dekalb County. We would love to have you come see what we're doing, because we're very proud of our implementation.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. James, could you take the traditional seat. Please identify 109 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 yourself for the record. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: Thank you very much. My name is Joseph James, Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Public Property.

I wanted to make sure you understand, we let you go last because I wanted you to hear what they all had to say so you could comment within the context of their testimony. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: I appreciate that.

I appreciate your patience. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: And I believe New York City is Sibel and they do use a Hansen application for one of their work order systems. Good afternoon, Councilman Kenney and members of the Committee. I am here on behalf of James Donaghy from the Managing Director's Office representing the Managing Director's Office for Pedro Ramos to testify to 110 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 support Resolution No. 06745 (sic) authorizing this joint Committee to hold hearings on whether the City should establish a constituent call center, also known as a 311 call center. The Administration would be pleased to reexamine the feasibility of creating a 311 call center with representatives from City Council if this is the desire of the Committee. As you know, many cities throughout the United States have implemented successful 311 call centers. These centers provide easy access for the general public for non-emergency government services through a single number. A successful 311 call center has several key components. The backbone of a successful call center is enterprise work order management systems that permit tracking a service request from initiation to completion through all City departments. The work order system assigns a unique tracking number when a 111 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 call-taker generates a service request. The status of the service request can be tracked with this number through all stages of the work order management process. The work order management system also tracks multiple productivity measures. A call center would be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operation, staffed by highly skilled and cross-trained call-takers. The call-takers must have access to a database of work flow procedures from all City departments. This database would need to be created for all City departments Citywide. This database would allow the call-taker to provide accurate and timely information to the caller. The call center must be scalable. This scalability allows a call center to expand operationally and respond to an increase of non-emergency service calls such as would occur during a snowstorm. 112 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 In 2002, the City explored the possibility of opening a 311 call center. However, after careful consideration, a decision was made to place the project on hold. There were some lessons learned through this process, and the City has taken steps to improve the existing 215-686-1776 City Hall switchboard call center. These improvements include an upgraded electronic City phone directory, which will allow the operator to provide accurate contact information for City service requests. New telephone equipment and software was installed at City Hall to track incoming calls and permit interactive voice response. This equipment allows callers to receive basic City service information electronically and allows supervisors to track call volume and assign staff more effectively. This equipment upgrade allowed placement of the Health Department's Health Center appointment call line in the City Hall call center. Finally, the process of 113 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 selection of an off-the-shelf enterprise work order management system is approaching conclusion. As I stated earlier, a work order management system is critical to the success of a 311 call center. In conclusion, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity today, and I'm available to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. At the end of your testimony, it says, "Finally, the process of selection of an off-the-shelf enterprise work order management system is approaching conclusion." That's just the work order system, not the full 311? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: That is correct.

And that would be implemented in which departments? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: Well, there are a number of departments. 114 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 It was Public Property, Streets Department. I'm trying to remember the other one.

But the implementation of this work order management system would not preclude the inevitability of a 311 system, or would it enhance it or would it have nothing really to do with -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: I think one of the shortcomings when we did the initial 311 project is that we were coming out with a solution for the productivity tool that they would use for the intake, but we saw that where we were not as successful was the back-end system. We had no uniform or at least consistent best-of-breed work order system to actually get the work done. So what we would do is create this false expectation that service was being done, but there was no real way of getting the work done.

The other 115 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 municipalities and governments that have implemented this have been able to seem to integrate the back-end work fulfillment part. So I guess my question is, is the work order management tool an impediment or potential enhancement of a traditional 311 call center? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: I think what we were looking at was two ways of approaching it. One, we could take the existing Legacy systems and try to make them work together with a front-end CRM solution. That was a possibility. Not the most successful possibility, but a possibility. Then the preferred solution from the operating departments who would actually get the calls is that they would prefer to have their Legacy systems replaced or, in some cases where a department did not have any system, have some sort of work order system so that they could be able to really be able to be measured on their performance and be able to provide true 116 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 information back to the call center on what was actually going on.

Was there any belief within the departments that having a 311 call center would allow them in some ways to conduct their core business more effectively as opposed to having to take the up-front requests and just from the 311 center receive the requests so that they can get to work on the actual work as opposed to the public relations part of -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: Right. The 311 call center, because we initially approached it as a consolidation effort and I think we're more -- the view now is the centralization effort. We want to centralize the kind of calls that come in from the public, not necessarily a consolidation, because it doesn't really save us people. It actually would increase our staffing levels to really perform it. 117 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 What the departments wanted is, they wanted the ability to track true performance measures. They would still have the fulfillment end of, you know, you call the 311 and you want a recycle bin. Well, yeah, the 311 center will take that and process a work request, but somebody in the Streets Department actually has got to send out that recycle bin. They would like a system that would allow them to manage their effort and their performance and allow the call center to be able to provide the information back to the public.

But also for the call center to provide the initial information to them? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: Yes. Yes.

Okay. Could you share with staff here whatever work was done on the initial 311 investigation that you guys did back in, 118 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 what, '02? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: '02, yes.

And also a potential list of resources that you think you would need to kind of kick start that again from a research and planning side of it, from a financial side of it. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JAMES: Sure. We would be able to provide that.

Thanks. Any questions for Mr. James? (No response.)

Thanks. Thanks for your time. Thank you for your attendance. We're hoping that we'll be able to kind of cull this information together and come up with some type of recommendations and also some type of plan for the future. There's about more than a year left of the Administration, and what I would like to see is some work document 119 12/4/06 - LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT - RES. 060745 available to the next Administration for potential implementation. Councilwoman, do you have anything?

That's fine.

Thank you very much for your attendance. (Joint Committees on Legislative Oversight and Public Safety adjourned at 3:00 p.m.) - - - 120 CERTIFICATE I HEREBY CERTIFY that the proceedings, evidence and objections are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me upon the foregoing matter on December 4, 2006, and that this is a true and correct transcript of same. ______________________________ MICHELE L. MURPHY RPR-Notary Public (The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the same by any means, unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.)