OROVILLE — The city of Oroville is looking to implement a 311 Citizen Relationship Management Solution for city employees to better manage non-emergency citizen requests.
The 311 CRMS are web-based systems that streamline residents’ non-emergency service requests, inquiries and concerns to appropriate city departments for addressing while allowing residents to follow the progress of their requests in real time.
“Our goal is to modernize and transform the customer service experience for the city residents and businesses by making city information and services easily accessible, responsive and efficient in managing the needs of its constituents,” said Patrick Piatt, Oroville community development director. “In short, a 311 CRMS program allows citizens to more easily interact with city and that will help the city provide better customer service and run more efficiently.
“Through the 311 CRMS program the public will be able to report issues or problems with graffiti, homeless camps, public utilities, roads and private property among other things. It will also allow the city to post links to public meetings, emergency notifications, events calendars and “other information the city wants to get to the public,” said Piatt.
“People can report all sorts of things like pot holes, stray or dead animals, abandoned vehicles, damaged or knocked down street or traffic signage, illegally dumped garbage, abandoned shopping carts, code violations, just a lot of things,” said Piatt. “Instead of 50 pairs of city staff workers’ eyes on the streets every day, the system will give us 20,000 pairs of eyes seeing what needs fixing, is broken or out of place. We can’t fix what we don’t know about, and giving citizens the ability to be our eyes and let us know about these things will greatly increase our efficiency in resolving problems more quickly.”
The 311 CRMS program will allow individuals to create a personal account or log in and communicate with the city as guests. While the city will know who is reporting an issue, no one in the public will be able to see who reported an issue. The system will also permit people to see how many other reports or request for the same issue have been made and to track the city’s progress in resolving the problem.
Piatt said he has worked in two other cities, Encinitas in San Diego County and Rosemead in Los Angeles County, where 311 CMRS programs have been implemented.
“It takes a little time for the public to get educated on how to use 311, but it’s a great tool,” said Piatt. “I saw that it really was a great advantage to the public and the cities where I worked. It reduced a lot of the public’s frustration in getting their concerns resolved.”
The request for proposal for a 311 CRMS was issued by the city June 12. The deadline for proposal submittal is July 10. Once the proposals are received, city staff will review them and invite the top vendors to give virtual presentations and be interviewed by staff. This process could take up to two weeks.
Piatt anticipates the RFPs that make the final cut will go before the Oroville City Council somewhere between mid-August and mid-September and that full implementation of the program will occur in early 2025.
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