Nov 1, 2004 12:00 PM

Operators Are Standing By

With services like 311, a better, smarter city is just a phone call away.

The moment the lights flickered off to begin the great blackout of 2003, New York City's emergency management teams put elegant procedures into action, anticipating New Yorkers' needs in a city suddenly denied power. They prevented looting, located stuck elevators, and prepared to treat victims of heat exhaustion. But for thousands of people that long night, the most pressing concern was something that hadn't occurred to the government: blood sugar levels.

As the blackout stretched from afternoon into early evening, many diabetics grew increasingly apprehensive about the shelf life of their refrigerated insulin. Emergency planners may not have foreseen those worries, but within a matter of hours, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was addressing the vital but arguably obscure topic in one of that night's many press conferences. The insulin issue had trickled up the command chain thanks to a service Bloomberg started: the 311 line. It may well be the most radical enhancement of urban information management since the invention of the census, and it promises to make urban centers into more livable spaces.

The citizen services phone line, modeled after the on-demand tech support in Bloomberg News terminals (as well as successful 311 programs in smaller cities such as Baltimore), offers one extraordinary feature right out of the gate: a live operator, with support for 170 different languages. After the initial connection, 311 turns out to be three distinct services in one.

First, it's a kinder, gentler 911: You dial 311 when there's a strange guy hovering around the playground, not breaking into your apartment.

Second, 311 functions as an information concierge. "The city offers a tremendous number of services," says Gino Menchini, commissioner of information technology and telecommunications and the director of 311. "But historically no one knew how to get to them. You're flipping through 20 pages in the phone book, trying to find the hotline you're looking for or figure out which department handles your issue. Fifteen percent of the calls coming in to older numbers didn't belong there."

Now all those questions funnel into a single source. Is tonight's Central Park concert canceled due to rain? Call 311. Looking for the nearest day care center? Call 311. Is alternate-side parking in effect? Call 311. "So if someone calls in to report a homeless encampment, that call gets routed to the police department's quality-of-life division," Menchini says. "If someone wants to help the homeless, the call gets routed to the Department of Homeless Services."

Third, the government learns as much as the callers do. That's the radical idea at the heart of the service: Every question or problem carries its own kind of data. Menchini's system tracks all that information; just as the heralded CompStat system mapped problem crime areas with new precision, 311 automatically records the location of each incoming service request in a huge database that feeds info throughout New York City's government. Think of 311 as a kind of massively distributed extension of the city's perceptual systems, harnessing millions of ordinary eyes on the street to detect emerging problems or report unmet needs - like those worries about unrefrigerated insulin. (Bloomberg himself is notorious for calling in to report potholes.)

Already, 311 data is changing the government's priorities. In the first year of operation, noise was the number one complaint; the Bloomberg administration subsequently launched a major quality-of-life initiative combating city noise. Today, geomapping software displays streets with chronic pothole troubles and blocks battling graffiti - all integrated into custom dashboards on city officials' laptops.

Those dashboards make 311 look very much like computer scientist David Gelernter's notion of "mirror worlds," which he described in his visionary 1991 book of that title. These are vast software representations that re-create the microactivities of actual communities in real time. Connect 311's database to a city full of Treos or Wi-Fi laptops, and it's easy to imagine the extended urban organism growing more adaptive: subway riders tapping in up-to-the-minute reports on passenger loads and parents giving high marks to a new hire at a school. New York is making 311 increasingly geo-aware; this summer, it rolled out a feature that allows callers to find the nearest event offered that day by the parks department. "Even I get surprised sometimes by what we have in there," Menchini says. "I was with my parents a few weeks ago, and they wanted to call 311 to find out if the Atlantic Avenue fair was on that day. I said, 'I don't know if we even have that info.' But sure enough, they knew the exact dates and location."

When people talk about network technology revolutionizing politics, it's usually in the context of national campaigns: Internet fundraising, political blogs. But the most profound impact may be closer to home: keeping a neighborhood safe, clean, and quiet; connecting city dwellers to the immense array of programs offered by their government; creating a sense that individuals can contribute to their community's overall health just by dialing three numbers. Even in an age of global networks, 311 reminds us that all politics is local.

Contributing editor Steven Johnson (www .stevenberlinjohnson.com) wrote Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life.
credit: Nathan Fox