Chicago's 311 system turns into a 'black hole' for residents' nonemergency complaints

Chicago’s 311 system was created to prevent people who live and work in the city from calling 911 for quality-of-life concerns that aren't emergencies. But according to outgoing Inspector General Deborah Witzburg, the system has turned into a “black hole” that leaves people in the dark about the status of the city’s response to their complaints — and fosters distrust of government.

Witzburg reached that conclusion after a comprehensive audit of the 28-year-old system, which is swamped with as many as 2.3 million requests annually for routine city services.

After a citywide survey of users of the 311 system and in-depth conversations with aldermanic staff in five wards, Witzburg identified a host of problems that prevents 311 from living up to its potential.

Residents and businesses are not updated consistently about the status of their complaints or the city’s response. Those complaints can range from a broken street light or gaping pothole to missing, stolen or broken garbage carts, as well as rats in alleys.

Staffing constraints hamstring the city’s ability to pinpoint patterns of requests and improve services. Exacerbating the staffing shortage is the fact that 311 system employees are required to assist more than 40 city departments and local government agencies with their 311 system needs, but have “limited capacity to do so.”

Managing limited city resources more efficiently is “explicitly part of 311’s mission,” but no one is responsible for using the mountain of information from 311 requests to “deliver improved customer service.”

“People make a 311 request for a city service, go look at the status of their online request and see that it has been coded 'completed.’ But then, they look out their front window and they see that the pothole is still gaping in their street,” Witzburg told the Chicago Sun-Times. “If people are asking the government for help, and they are not getting the help that they need, and they’re not able to get any information about why they’re not getting help, or when it might come, we are risking public trust in the provision of city services.”

To eliminate the “black hole” of service requests, Witzburg recommended that the Office of Emergency Management and Communications that operates both 911 and 311 “clarify its public resources about the service request process” and communicate more timely and accurate information to residents and businesses about the status of their service requests.

At a time when many private-sector businesses are using artificial intelligence to handle most, if not all, of their customer service requests, Witzburg also pushed for 311 staff to implement “technology solutions” to help multiple city departments “respond to requests efficiently in the field.”

The audit also recommends a staffing analysis and that a so-called “service advocacy unit” hold regular meetings with city departments, in part to identify patterns of complaints that might trigger a realignment of city resources devoted to chronic problems.

In its official response to Witzburg’s findings and recommendations, OEMC noted that the service advocacy unit “has not existed for several years.” But the department has attempted to fill the void by sending monthly emails to city departments “notifying them of open service requests.” Training is also provided to departments twice a month.

“Management recognizes the importance of a centralized service advocacy function in supporting departments and maximizing the value of 311 data. However, the Service Advocacy Unit is no longer in existence. The responsibilities… have been absorbed into existing operational roles with limited capacity,” the OEMC response states.

“Management agrees that more structured and consistent engagement with departments would be beneficial and will continue to explore opportunities with existing resources to improve communication regarding system settings, service level agreement and best practices.”

In 1998, Mayor Richard M. Daley created the 311 system — at a cost of $4 million — to take the load off 911. At the time, 911 was handling 3.7 million calls a year, with as many as 40% nonemergencies.

The nonemergency number was launched after a massive campaign to persuade Chicagoans to stop doing what 4,000 people did every day: call 911 about routine problems.

In 2015, a City Council rebellion forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel to shelve his controversial plan to privatize 311 and find another way to bankroll a sorely needed system upgrade after alderpersons argued that services so pivotal to their residents must be provided by Chicagoans who know the city and its neighborhoods.

Three years later, Emanuel flipped the switch on an overhaul that not only allowed Chicagoans to text their service requests, along with photographic evidence, but also let the city text those same residents back to let them know when crews would do the work. Residents were supposed to get a text when work was completed.