Chicago 311 Base Case

Headquarters of 311 City Services: 2111 W. Lexington St., Chicago, IL 60612

Phone: (312) 746-9760

Purpose: To provide citizens with information about city services; to accept citizen requests and complaints, routing them to the right department for resolution.

Chief Information Officer: Chris O'Brien

System Budget for 2004: $500,000 for system maintenance; $329,760 for information-technology personnel; $3.5 million for call-center operators and 311 managers.

Challenge: Make Chicago government more responsive to its three million citizens amid a municipal hiring freeze and employee cuts of 4.8% in 2004.

Baseline Goals:

• Answer incoming calls within 13 seconds, while call volume grows a projected 5.6% to 4 million calls in 2004.
• Create perpetual archive of two years' worth of service requests, amounting to 3.7 million or more records.
• Install backup systems to recover data and operations within four hours after a disaster.