Pittsburgh upgrades 311 system at fast pace to allow remote work

See a pothole? Call 311. A tree limb down in your park? Call 311. Need to know the city’s latest news during a global pandemic? Call 311.

The operators on the other side of the phone line are among the city staff that have reported to their office on the sixth floor of the CityCounty Building in Downtown Pittsburgh during the COVID-19 pandemic, but upgrades to the city’s system should allow them to work from home.

“They serve a critical function in these times to get people the information they need,” mayoral spokesman Timothy McNulty said. “They’re essential workers.”

An outdated network had kept the city’s Department of Innovation

and Performance’s 12 call takers, five information technology analysts and two managers from answering calls and solving tech issues from home, according to director Santiago Garces.

They had to be physically present in the building where the hardware — phones and computer servers — connects to the network that allows them to take calls. Mr. Garces couldn’t answer what year the system dates back to.

Staff had been reporting in staggered shifts and sitting at least 6 feet apart. Some vulnerable staff had already been sent home to answer online 311 requests remotely.

“For us as a department, we’ve been trying to accommodate for people to work from home, but there are still a number of us working [on site]. We’re taking precautions,” Mr. Garces said last week.

Unless city employees work in public safety, pick up trash or respond to an emergency inspection or infrastructure fix, it’s likely that Mr. Garces and his staff have set them up to work from home.

Mr. McNulty said Mr. Garces’ team “prioritized every other city department before they started doing their own.”

The city’s outdated 311 and IT system was slated to be fixed in the next three years, but then came COVID-19.

So Mr. Garces reached out to the San Francisco-based company Twilio to expedite the upgrade.

The cloud-based telecommunications company is responsible for the texts you receive confirming your reservation on Open Table or maybe your doctor’s office, and for the call feature in the Lyft app.

Its public service arm, Twilio.org, connects 100 million people a year by

supporting government and nonprofit operations, according to company figures. Think school emergency text and email alerts, or large-scale hotlines, including mental health and suicide hotlines.

While the company usually offers initial credits and discounts on these products, it now will provide grants for organizations that need to establish communications quickly during the COVID-19 outbreak, said Erin Reilly, chief social

impact officer for Twilio.org.

“I think a lot of cities would probably say the same thing that they don’t know what year their system is from, and credit to Santiago [Garces] for updating it,” Ms. Reilly said. “… Twilio is just really honored to play a part in helping more people connect with the city right now.”

When residents dial 311, their call will be routed through “the cloud” — or, internet servers in large warehouses on the East Coast and in Arizona — and sent to a city operator’s cellphone. Twilio operates its servers via Amazon Web Services and Google.

Nothing changes for city residents — they dial 311, just as they always have.

“This is kind of unheard of, especially in government, when we have a concept of testing a solution and almost deploying it in a week,” Mr. Garces said.

Calls about city services and business closures during the COVID-19 crisis are “becoming the predominant call type,” he said.

The cost will be about $2,500 a month, and in the event of a surge of calls, the price will remain discounted, according to Mr. Garces.

Mayor Bill Peduto’s emergency declaration on March 13 allows the city to expedite procurement and purchasing. The Twilio contract has not yet been added to the city’s Open Book online contract database.

Ms. Reilly said other cities have reached out about similar upgrades.

Mr. Garces said he and one of his IT engineers joined a call last week with officials from Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Reno, Nev.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Miami to discuss the upgrades, and he is on a group text with his international counterparts in Dublin, Amsterdam and other cities.

“We have to respond very rapidly to these situations, and the only way to do that effectively is sharing,” he said. “We’re modernizing the operation of the city as fast as possible to make sure people can work from home and stay as safe as possible.”

“We’re modernizing the operation of the city as fast as possible to make sure people can work from home and stay as safe as possible.”

— Santiago Garces, director, Pittsburgh's Department of Innovation and Performance