When you ask Calgarians about their 311 experiences, you get a flood of responses – with many around communication about how service requests are closed.
That’s an area the City of Calgary wants to address with Calgarians expressing frustration with what a “closed” 311 service request really means. An update on this work was provided in a briefing note included with the Executive Committee agenda at the May 14 meeting.
LiveWire Calgary put a call out to people for their experiences with the Calgary 311 system, particularly around the Service Request (SR) being closed, but work not being done. Rather than singling out one specific instance, all of the responses were provided.
They were generally summed up, however, by the response of Sean Carter.
“Biggest complaint: They ‘close’ requests before the work is completed which is both frustrating and confusing,” Carter wrote in response.
“They need to change that.”
Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot said more should be done to communicate effectively with citizens when their service requests are initiated.
“What I’ve heard from residents is that they’ll call in for a pothole, as an example, and then and then they get an SR number and they follow up on the SR and then (the city) says, ‘oh, it’s been closed,’” Chabot said.
“And then (citizens) say, but the pothole is not fixed.”
There’s a back and forth over the timing of the pothole fill, mixed with citizen patience until the citizen calls his office back to say the work still hasn’t been done. He said that’s when the city tells his office that a work order has been issued, and the work might be planned for months down the road.
“Many times, it misses that season, and it doesn’t get followed up, at least not proactively in the following season,” he said.
“So, how do we make sure that those SRs are followed through properly, that there are actions, and that we don’t take the SR off the books.”
