Systems: Clarenville needs a A 3-1-1 system Telephone/web Job Order System

It may have worked okay 20-30 years ago, but getting Town assistance by calling the Mayor or Councillors out of bed when an incident occurs during the night is no longer a suitable approach for a modern town.   As we have grown and as experience has shown, situations occur time-to- time, day and night, where citizens need to contact the town in order to address a situation.   As we witnessed many times over the past few years, if a water line breaks overnight, few people would have any idea who to call – while time is important.  The non-emergency telephone number 3-1-1 exists in larger municipalities in Canada and the United States.  

Dialing this single number would allow a resident to obtain important non-emergency services through a central, all-purpose phone number quickly and effectively.

The implementation for Clarenville could be relatively simple.   We can either contract the existing 24/7 fire call service or we can contract a call centre to take the calls.  The Call information would then be documented and routed to the contact assigned for that night/day.  

We could also set up a Clarenville311 email / website / twitter address, so people can contact the town in more ways than phone.

Such a publicly accessible system would document issues and create a clear workorder for the Public Works Department - which in turn could publicly "close" the issue when the issue was addressed or the work was done (this would add highly to accountability and build public engagement)

For the system to work effectively, the system number needs to be well communicated.  Significant effort needs to be put here. 

There's an App for that!

Here's an example of a popular piece of 311 software used in many municipalities across North America called SEECLICKFIX. It's easy to use - click to see it/download it