Philadelphia Publishes 3-1-1 Call Data
by Pat Loeb
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Philadelphia has published details of nearly 1 million calls to its 3-1-1 service center as part of its open data effort.
Residents can see who makes the most calls and what they're about, if they want to sift through the mountain of information now available online.
There are some surprises in what makes residents call for city help.
Raccoons. In an urban environment, who would have thought the bandit-masked little varmints would generate so many calls to 3-1-1?
"It is amazing how many calls there are about raccoons," said 3-1-1 director Tim Thornton
He says most of the calls are simply questions, but 30% require action and, of those, the biggest issue is trash: be it from the neighbors, or street trees, or short dumpers.
"There seems to be a theme of tires being dumped around the city, and construction stuff, so maybe it's a byproduct of how things are booming," said Thornton.
There are novel calls, like the squatter who called to complain that the water had been turned off in the house he was living in illegally, and a large number of people want 3-1-1 to tell them how to get in touch with President Obama.
"We have a process for that, believe it or not, but it's a little bit like sending a letter to Santa Claus," Thornton said.
You can read through the data yourself here: https://www.opendataphilly.org/dataset/311-service-and-information-requests
