Part 9 of 9 in After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311
What Philadelphia Should Do About 311
The eight articles above make the case. This one makes the ask — five policy moves, each anchored in a number the city itself generated.
A Philadelphian files a Shoveling complaint. The city promises one business day. It meets that promise 11.4% of the time. Multiply that pattern across 27 published SLAs, nine agencies, 75,929 open tickets, and 41 zip codes, and you have the rest of this series. The eight articles above made the case. This one makes the ask.
1Audit the seven sub-50% SLAs.
Article 5 in my series documented the bimodal pattern: Water Department hits 89.4% of Inlet Cleaning, Streets hits 11.4% of Shoveling. 7 of 27 published SLAs are met less than half the time, including two 1-business-day safety promises. For each, hit the number or change the number.
2Publish the queue, or staff up, or narrow intake — pick one.
Article 4 in my series surfaced the 75,929-ticket backlog. 30.6% of those tickets have sat untouched for 365+ days. The system stopped — publish the queue, staff up (will require significant budget increases), or stop taking 311 calls and tell citizens the service is at capacity (politically toxic), but pick one.
3Track whether the work was done, not whether the ticket was closed.
Article 8 in my series text-mined 69,140 closure notes. Only 31.4% of those tickets recorded real action — 53.2% were information-only callbacks, 11.4% were referrals, and the rest other categories the city tracks separately. The 92.4% closure rate the city publishes counts paperwork, not fixes.
4Log zip codes on Information Requests.
Article 1 in my series found that 97% of the city’s 748,893 call-center records have no zip code — the city throws away the geography of who calls and why. Start logging it.
5Address the income gap in 311 service levels
Article 2 in my series showed a 2.6-day gap between how quickly poor and rich neighborhoods received 311 services. The by-department breakdown showed the pattern persisted — for example, L&I closed rich-zip requests in 29.1 days and poor-zip ones in 57.5 days. City services must not discriminate by income.
Running organizations is difficult, I’ve personally led 3, so I know. The job is to start with the data, find what’s solvable with the resources you have, and fix it. My deep dive into 311 surfaced five. None need new budget. None need new headcount. They need the city to do what any well-run organization would do in week one — count what got fixed, publish what didn’t, and act on the gap. That’s what I would do.