BUSINESS PROBLEM-SOLVING CASE The Philly31 1 Project: The City of Brotherly Love Turns Problems into Opportunities Philly311 is the City of Philadelphia government's municipal services.) The first version of Philly311 was centralized non-emergency contact center that is designed to provide the public with quick, easy phone accessible to all residents, businesses, and visitors. access to all city services and information. Using Philly311, you can find out how to start a When Mayor Michael A. Nutter came into office business, contact your local police district, obtain in 2007, he called for a more transparent and efficient a smoke alarm, and issue requests for services such government, increasing integrity, more open data as fixing broken traffic signals, repairing potholes, practices, and improving government accountabil or removing graffiti. You can also use Philly311 to ity. The Nutter administration wanted to empower report abandoned vehicles, unsafe/improper housing Philadelphians and work with them on government- conditions, and complaints. Philly311 can be con related issues that citizens care most about. Accord- tacted by phone, by visiting its website, or by using ing to Rosetta Lue, Philadelphia's Chief Customer a mobile app. Philly311 receives more than a million Service Officer, the customer may always be right, but calls each year. that only goes so far if the customer can't be heard. Requests for service through 311 generally have Philadelphia's citizens are its customers, and city gov- expected time frames for action or resolution. After ernment should use the best tools possible to make receiving a request for service, Philly311 will provide sure every citizen is connected and can be heard loud a citizen with a reference number to track the status and clear. In the past, when Philadelphians called 311 of that request as it moves through different depart- with a service request, such as a pothole they wanted ments by calling the Philly311 Call Center, visiting the fixed, they would have no idea when the city would get Philly311 website, or using the mobile app. Residents around to addressing it, which led to frustration for can relay photos to city officials for more effective residents and repeated calls to the city. response to service calls and receive real-time updates The project timeline for upgrading Philly311 was on their requests. The city is able to mine data from ambitious, aiming for making the new center opera- the Philly311 system to identify trends that will help tional by the end of 2008. Managers Jeffrey Friedman city employees to discover and address the needs and Patrick Morgan engaged an external consulting of citizens. Philly311 also features a Neighborhood group to develop a plan and scope for the 311 system. Community portal that allows citizens to engage with In June 2008, Mayor Nutter and City Managing Direc- fellow residents on shared concerns and interact with tor and Executive Sponsor Camille Barnett approved each other and city departments and officials directly. the implementation strategy. Lue joined the Philly311 The system includes GPS integrative mapping so the project team in May 2008. The team worked collec public and city government can view service requests tively to develop civil service testing requirements for by location. contact center agents. Thirty representatives from Philly311 has been extremely popular with citi- various city departments helped populate the Philly311 zens, earning a customer satisfaction rate of 98 per- knowledge base with more than 2,000 articles about cent. Moreover, Philly311 is much, much more than city services and municipal information. a traditional government call center. Residents can In September 2008, the national financial crisis connect with Philly311 by telephone, email, mail, a caused a drastic cut in Philly31I's budget, affecting the walk-in center, or the Philly Mobile App. Philly311 has Philly311 implementation. At the same time, however, also extended its service through social media. The the crisis created an opportunity to improvise cre- Philly311 Facebook and Twitter accounts are managed atively by developing a fairly low-cost solution using by an experienced agent who responds to questions and established city services and technologies. Instead of enters service requests based on user interaction. Since implementing new software for a customer relation- the beginning of 2012, Philly311 has seen a 360 percent ship management (CRM) system, the Philly311 project increase in its social media followers. team worked with the city's Department of Technology Philly311 started out as a traditional 311 call center. to implement a less expensive web-based solution with The telephone number 3-1-/ is a special telephone CRM functions. This web-based system was integrated number used by many communities in Canada and with other systems so, for example, agents were able the United States to provide access to non-emergency to look up municipal information and directly enterservice requests into the integrated work systems incorporated when needed. The mobile Philly311 app of servicing departments. Philly311's new budget con- was the first 311 app to be offered in 16 different lan- straints also put a brake on hiring and head count. guages. This app now accounts for 18 percent of the Instead of hiring experienced contact center agents, requests Philly311 receives. Philly311 hired internal transfers and employees who Philly311's traffic volume steadily increased, and by would have been laid off due to budget cutbacks. the end of 2012, Philly311 had taken its 5 millionth call. Delays in the implementation timetable gave Lue and The popularity of the service demonstrates the tremen- her team more time to study the problem and develop dous benefit and popularity of the system, but it also a sound solution. created operational strain. In 2011, an independent gap Lue wanted to make sure that the system would analysis found that the existing system did not have the be easy for customers to use, so local citizens were capacity to continue supporting Philadelphia's grow- involved in the new Philly311 design from the begin- ing service requirements. The system was not built to ning. Bringing users in early in the process also saved handle very large volumes of data, nor could it easily time during system implementation and rollout. They archive data about citizen calls, complaints, and follow- were able to bring together about 100 people from ups. These technology limitations prevented the city different city departments to say what they liked and from crunching data or from changing business pro- what they didn't like about the technology and new cesses to improve workforce efficiency. business processes. They had a chance to see how data The time had come to invest in new technology to were coming in, how they would be used, and how keep pace with current demands and to position the Philadelphia could be more efficient and effective. city for future technology and business developments. The Philly311 project had full executive support from After months of planning, a solution was finalized: The Mayor Nutter and the city's managing director. The project planning process took special care to define upgraded call center opened on December 31, 2008, a detailed set of business and technical requirements and the new Philly311 website went online in January for the new system. The solution selected contained 2009. The website had many of the same functions several modules, allowing city management to pick and as the call center: customers could connect with 311, choose which features were most critical. One called report an issue, or ask about public services through the Neighborhood Community portal allows citizens email. To make Philly311 even more accessible to citi- to communicate with neighbors and like-minded zens through multiple channels, the city launched a residents about concerns and issues relevant to them. social media campaign and expanded its public reach Mayor Nutter finally obtained $120 million in funding through social media in October 2009. Philly311 estab- for capital investment projects to upgrade technol- lished a Twitter account that provided citizens a new ogy infrastructure and chose Philly311 as one of those way to receive information. investments. With a city as large as Philadelphia, which has an After a rigorous RFP selection process, Unisys was above-average percentage of residents living below the chosen to lead the IT implementation for this project, poverty line, city leaders realized they needed to work and Salesforce's cloud computing platform was selected on establishing trust within individual communities as the underlying technology for the system. Unisys to educate and provide access to Philly311. The city had implemented similar 311 systems on the Salesforce hired a community engagement coordinator to address platform for Hampton, Virginia, and Elgin, Illinois. community concerns and to oversee the Neighbor- The city chose Salesforce.com in part because of its hood Liaison Program (NLP), which trains volunteers capabilities as a platform. In addition to full-featured to record items discussed during community meetings CRM functionality, Salesforce.com has its own app and encourages standout community leaders to bring store and cloud platform for building and running their neighbors' public service concerns straight to apps. That way, the city can leverage its investment to Philly311. In the program's first year, 600 neighborhood take advantage of other apps that work on the Sales- liaisons were trained, and two years after the program's force platform. launch, the number of neighborhood liaisons had The new CRM system, released in December 2014, doubled. is much more robust, integrating the city's knowledge Philly311 launched its mobile application in 2012. base, service departments' work order systems, and The app provides another way for residents to connect community engagement programs in a single customer to Philly311, and it also allows customers to add on-site portal. The system improves the city's ability to share and real-time images to their service requests. The app knowledge and work interdepartmentally and creates is free to the public and can be downloaded onto a social platform that facilitates conversations between a smartphone. Add-on widgets, such as a widget for neighbors and stakeholders who want to collaborate, election days and after-school programs, can be share best practices, and organize events to improve472 Part IV: Building and Managing Systems their community. The new Philly311 helps the city capi- expanded its reach and has even become a resource and talize on a variety of communications, including social example for those outside of Philadelphia. Philly311 has media data, to better understand the needs of its citizen helped build a more reliable city government and make customers. Philadelphia a welcoming and connected city. Philly311 has been widely embraced by Philadelphia residents, and has received numerous accolades. It was Sources Rosetta Carrington Lue and Cory Fleming with Amanda V. Wagner, selected as a winner of the 2015 Government Computer "Creating a Welcoming and Connected City: The Philadelphia Experience," News Awards for IT excellence. In 2015, Philly311 www.phila.gov, accessed January 11, 2017; Derek Major, "Philly 311: Inno- became a finalist for the United Nations' Public Service vation That Was Worth the Wait," Government Computer News, October 15, 2015; Jake Williams, "Philadelphia Rolls Out Innovation Blueprint, 31 1 Award for demonstrating attention to its international Upgrade," statescoop.com, February 19, 2015; City of Philadelphia, "Mayor audience, and in 2013 Philly311 was named an ICMI Nutter Announces Successful Launch of New Philly 311 System," February 18, 2015; and Lauren Hertzler, "Philadelphia Unveils Enhanced 301 System Global Call Center award finalist. The system has at Innovation Summit," bizjournals.com, February 19, 2015. CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 12-12 Assess the importance of the Philly311 project 12-15 What risk mitigation strategies did Philadel- for the city of Philadelphia and its citizens. phia use for its Philly311 project? How did 12-13 What problems was the Philly311 project they help? designed to solve? 12-14 Why was the Philly311 project so successful? What people, organization, and technology factors contributed to its success