What is Local Law 47?
Local Law 47 of 2005 requires the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) to issue monthly reports to the City Council, the Public Advocate, Community Boards and the public regarding data collected on calls made to the 3-1-1 Citizen Service Center. Below you will find links to these reports, along with additional resources on NYC.gov describing the performance of City agencies.
Signed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in May 2005, Local Law 47 is the result of DoITT's work with the City Council. The prime sponsor of the legislation was Council Member Gale A. Brewer, Chairperson of the Council's Committee on Technology in Government. Making agency performance data available is an important way to ensure open government, and this law provides the public with valuable information while protecting the privacy and confidentiality of callers to 3-1-1.
DoITT remains committed to improving these reports going forward, and periodic meetings will be held with representatives from the City's Community Boards to review the 3-1-1 Reports' content and format.
NOTE: The 3-1-1 Reports reflect only those requests and inquiries that are received through 3-1-1. As a result, the data reported here represents a portion of an agency's total workload. Therefore, these reports should be reviewed in combination with other information to assess the quantity, quality and timeliness of agency service levels. Links to additional resources can be found below.
Agency Data
In the spirit of the law, certain agencies that receive significant volumes of requests that are not entered into the 3-1-1 computer system have provided similar performance data at a citywide level. These reports can be found under the heading Citywide Reports, with the title Local Law 47 Report - Citywide Legacy Reports.
Structure of 3-1-1 Data:
Below is a more detailed explanation of what Local Law 47 reports include, and how the data is organized. Indicator definitions and important notes follow. You may find it helpful to refer to these explanations when reviewing the 3-1-1 Reports.
Calls to the 3-1-1 Citizen Service Center are categorized in one of two ways: as an Inquiry or as a Request for Service:
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Inquiries result either in information being provided to the customer by 3-1-1 or, in a referral/transfer directly to another agency or provider.
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Requests for Service result in information being collected by 3-1-1 that is then forwarded electronically to the appropriate agency for action.
3-1-1 does not collect location (or geographic) information about inquiries. These are reported at a citywide level. Additionally, there are certain types of Requests for Service where there is no identifiable incident location. DoITT reports on these locations as 'Unknown'.
For Requests for Service where there is an incident location, the data is available by Community District, City Council District, Borough and Zip Code. Where requests for service span several Community Districts or zip codes, DoITT is specific as possible and uses the most appropriate geographic category.
Report Details:
DoITT is initially providing two main reports:
Report I: Request for Service Summary
These are a series of reports that provide a summary of the service requests made to an agency on a monthly basis and include the time to respond to each request for service. The reports are grouped by the agency responding to the service request and the request type, and are provided at the Citywide, Community Board, City Council District, Borough and Zip Code level. Following is a list of terms used within the reports and their definitions.
Definitions:
- Outstanding Requests
- The total number of open requests for service at a given period of time.
- Requests Received
- The number of all new requests for service that the agency received within the given reporting period.
- Requests Closed
- This section represents the total number of requests for service that the agency reported to 3-1-1 as being closed within the given time period, regardless of when they were received. Service requests may have been closed sooner than reported as there may be a lag between when services are provided and when that information is entered into the 3-1-1 computer system.
- Average to Close*
- Average to Close is a measure of how long it took the agency to close a given request for service. It is calculated in calendar days and is the difference between when the request for service was created at the 3-1-1 Citizen Service Center and when the agency changed the request to the status of closed.
*Average to Close information does not represent the actual time it took for the agency to fulfill the request for service. Rather, this data reports on the time elapsed between when the request was received at 3-1-1, and when the agency marked the request as closed in the 3-1-1 computer system.
Report II: Directory Assistance Summary
This report is a citywide summary of the types of inquiries 3-1-1 received for each of the Mayoral agencies. For this report, inquiries have been classified into 3 categories:
- Resolved at 3-1-1
- This category represents customer calls that were resolved by a 3-1-1 Call Center Representative.
- Referral / Transfer
- This category represents calls that needed to be transferred in order to have the issue fully resolved.
- Not Recorded
- These include calls where the caller and the agent were disconnected before the call could be resolved or where the request was outside the jurisdiction of 3-1-1. This often includes requests for commercial services (restaurant locations, etc.) or general information (travel directions).
Important Reporting Notes:
Geographic Coding
3-1-1 validates locations for requests for service using one of three possible methods: exact address (for example, 125 Hyland Blvd.), intersection search (30th Street and Main) or block search (Fulton between William and Nassau). The majority of service requests have an exact address, which is required to accurately categorize requests by City Council District and Community Board. A given block or intersection may fall into two or more of these areas. When this occurs, these requests for service are not included in the Community District and Community Board portion of the reports, but will be included in the Borough and Zip Code portion of the reports. As a result, the totals in each location-based report may vary.
Agency Performance Reporting
In some cases, requests for service are taken within the 3-1-1 system and electronically routed to the appropriate agency, where tracking and fulfillment of these requests is done in a secondary computer system. As such, 3-1-1 cannot report response time for these requests. Where this is the case, an asterisk will appear in the 'Average Time to Close' and 'Outstanding' portions of the Request for Service Summary report. The agencies may be contacted directly with any questions regarding these requests. Please submit all inquiries through our web form.
Definition of 'Closed'
There are various ways in which an agency uses the 3-1-1 system to manage requests for services assigned to them. In the majority of cases, when an agency 'Closes' a request for service, it indicates when they updated the 3-1-1 computer system used to intake the request; it does not represent when the request was actually fulfilled. Agencies strive to close service requests in a timely manner, and the fulfillment of the request takes priority over updating the application.
Report Delivery
Pursuant to the requirements of the law, reports will be created seven business days from the end of each month. They will be posted online and email notifications will be sent to the report recipients notifying them that they are available for viewing.
Report Inquiries
For any questions regarding these reports, to request past reports, or to suggest report enhancements, please use our feedback form.