311 purchase delayed for community input

On Thursday, January 17, the Austin City Council was poised to approve a $724K contract for 311 services. It was item 37 on the agenda and you can view it here. (The purchasing doc attachment has summary information on the project.)

Open Austin member Chip Rosenthal spoke at the City Council meeting and asked, on behalf of Open Austin, to delay action and allow the local civic tech community to get a presentation and provide feedback on the proposal. With the support of Joe Calabrese, Program Director for Austin 311, City Council approved our request on a 6-0 vote.

You can view video playback from that portion of the meeting here.

First thing you should know is that there has been some crummy press reporting on this item. Some news reports have presented this as a $724K purchase for a mobile app. Actually, the mobile app is just one line item in the project.

Still, even though the mobile app is just a part of the project, it's still a lot of money. We'd like to make sure it's funds well spent. We'd also like, when feasible and prudent, to support spending technology dollars locally.

It is important that this project improve access to 311 data and services. The City of Austin uses a proprietary product for the 311 call center. The Austin 311 database and programming interfaces (APIs) currently are closed to the public. Nationally, there is a movement towards open standards and applications to support 311 services. We believe it is important that our 311 investments help us leverage the emerging open tools and standards.

The City Council has requested that Austin Energy give a presentation to the Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission on Wednesday evening, February 13. (Calendar link is here.) The meeting is open to the public, and usually presented live on Channel 6 cablecast and internet stream. Citizens are welcome to attend, and may sign up to speak up to three minutes.

Please come participate in the commission meeting to learn more about -- and to support opening -- 311 services.