09-17-18 Personnel and Finance (#9)

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CITY OF SOUTH BEND OFFICE OF THE CLERK the different departments that 311 has been experiencing. And again,this is the connection of the systems that handle everything from pothole requests and code issues to trash and solid waste management. This (referencing a slide in the presentation) is just a screenshot of the product they have created where they have the information from the resident. Depending on the call, residents can submit a request anonymously or they can provide their information if they need to be verified. Then,we can track all the issues the residents are calling about. The nice thing now is we are able to track also when multiple people call about the same issue. He continued, So we have a fair amount of intelligence that benefits our employees but also the people that run the departments. So we have service requests and have maps for the people doing the work to know where exactly the request is coming from.They have all the relevant information that people are submitting. We have an interactive map with the locations of the all the service requests which right now is internal but next year we plan to make it available to everyone. We are able to track patterns in call data such as what days of the week and what weeks we have higher call volume in the Center. We are able to do a better job of tracking different ways the residents are getting ahold of us whether it be by social media, email or the new 311 Portal. In the next year or so,the 311 Portal will be enabled to have people submit requests via mobile phone. We've had some great results. This is testimony from the departments as well as 311. The people really like the mapping and they like the ability of tracking multiple items on the same call. They also like being able to track multiple calls about the same issue. There is very good project management and interaction. We get rated a number of times by the departments and by 311 to make sure that the new features really address the things that people care about. There is also a way of escalating an issue to a supervisor of any department. He went on, Another project we wanted to share with you was our digital inclusion initiative that the Council funded last year as well. That is a collaboration between our Services, Infrastructure and Civic Innovation Divisions but also some departments of the City like Venues, Parks & Arts, Public Works and local partners like MetroNet and the Public Libraries. Last year as we centralized all of the telephone lines and internet bills, we realized that there is about $200,000 a year we are paying for connections that were not used. So we used those funds that we saved and we created a plan that passed after we presented to the Council last year to connect the majority of our City facilities with MetroNet. MetroNet is our local dark-fiber provider with which the City has a special agreement. In purple(referencing a slide in the presentation)you have all the facilities that had been connected previously and then in green you have all the facilities we connected this past year. In yellow are facilities we have planned for connections but that are not yet connected to the MetroNet. He continued, As we have made these connections possible, we've increased the speed of the connectivity to the internet our employees have. It also improves the security of the connection. It is all tied to our network and the fact that we've made a lot of investments to make sure it is monitored and secured. That has reduced the downtime. The availability and the security is very good. Especially for our Fire Stations and other buildings that are critical that they are up and connected. So based on this great project, our Director of Civic Innovation and our team started interacting with MetroNet and with the public libraries and we started coming up with this concept of all residents being within a fifteen(15) minute walk of a digital inclusion center. As part of this agreement,we were able to get$90,000 worth of grants from MetroNet to connect both the Charles Black and the Martin Luther King Jr. Centers with MetroNet. That is money we didn't have to spend. Just to highlight, in blue (referencing a slide in the presentation)you'll notice areas where EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 1227 W.Jefferson Bvld I South Bend,Indiana 466011p 574.235.9221 I f 574.235.91731 TTD 574.235.55671 www.southbendin.gov 13