Mayor Edwin M. Lee today launched the new release of the Open311 Platform for the City and County of San Francisco, providing an official SF311 mobile app for the public and a new endpoint for developers. This new feature of San Francisco’s 311 Customer Service Center will improve how residents obtain information, report problems and track service requests remotely and on-location through their smartphone.

“The new SF311 mobile application will make it even easier for San Francisco residents and visitors to communicate with City government and request City services while ‘on the go,’” said Mayor Lee. “311 is using innovation to deliver exceptional customer service and enable City Departments to react, repair and address quality of life issues. By adopting the Open311 platform and opening up government even more, we are able to provide better City services for everyone.”

“We are very excited because what makes our SF311 App different than any other is that it fully exposes to the public the knowledge database used internally by our staff. The Connected Bits Spot Reporter platform has allowed us to support an expanded range of services in a simple, user friendly application, greatly improving the accuracy of how we route requests to the appropriate servicing agency.” said 311 Director Nancy Alfaro.  “Using the app also improves our ability to link a customer’s request from the app to those reported via the web or by phone and provides end to end continuity of requests.”

The City and County of San Francisco’s 311 Customer Service Center began providing one-stop city services in 2007, and has since gone on to answer over 15 million calls, in addition to providing convenient online access. 

The new SF311 app for residents and visitors to San Francisco allows users to quickly and easily report quality of life issues by sending pictures, a brief description and a map-based location. Whether reporting issues such as graffiti, potholes, or street cleaning, the City’s new SF311 app simplifies and streamlines the process, ensuring it routes directly to the appropriate servicing agency for quicker response time. The user can view the status of the case in the app and receive a notification of its completion. The app offers one more way users can communicate with the 311 Customer Service Center for non-emergency City services and information. In addition to being able to talk to a live Customer Service Representative by phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year in over 170 languages, the public can use Twitter, Facebook, the Web, and now the mobile SF311 app. 

The new SF311 App is available on both Apple iPhone and Android platforms and can be downloaded for free from the Apple iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store, respectively.

To learn more about the SF311 app, go to: www.sf311.org/mobile.

Open311 began in 2009 as San Francisco worked with other cities and companies in the U.S. and Canada to create an open standard that provides access for developers to historically closed city systems. This platform encourages participation by the public by improving the transparency of services offered and allowing accountability of the work performed. Through the Connected Bits Spot Reporter platform, all existing Open311 partners are able to transition easily to the new platform and will have updated applications very soon. All of the requests submitted to the City through Open311, as well as the phone, online, or Twitter, are published on San Francisco’s Open Data Portal located at data.sfgov.org.

About Connected Bits
Connected Bits is the developer of Spot Reporters, a mobile reporting application that enables governments and other organizations to simplify the way their communities report issues – from potholes to power outages – using mobile devices and the Web. They provide an Open311 compliant platform for other developers to access the City Systems and encourage development.