Deep dive into RVA311 at 4th District Meeting

The 4th district’s new city council member, Sarah Abubaker, is switching things up for her monthly meetings. Each gathering will focus on a single aspect of city government and aims to give residents the information they need to better advocate for themselves. For the first meeting of her term, Abubaker invited Peter Briel, the city’s Director of Citizen Service and Response to talk about RVA311, and how citizens can best use it to solve problems.

RVA311 is Richmond’s system for requesting services and reporting non-emergency issues — Abubaker is a huge proponent. The system is available in English and Spanish and takes a wide range of requests, from flagging potholes and graffiti, to renewing occupational licenses. Most recently it helped process more than 2,200 applications for Water Recovery Assistance Funds, which paused after quickly reaching capacity.

Why focus on RVA311?

“This is something that does work,” Abubaker stressed to the sizable gathering at the Abacus meeting space in the Stratford Hills Shopping Center. For the city councilors and their liaisons, RVA311 can make their work more effective by creating trackable tickets that can be connected to the right city department. In order to escalate issues brought up by constituents, she told the crowd, “We need receipts!”

Richmond residents are generating those receipts in bulk. According to Peter Briel, RVA311 answers around 180,000 calls per year, which equates to about 85,000 requests. Volume has picked up recently, with many days seeing over 1,000 calls, which used to be a rarity.

Fully staffed and improving

Breil was pleased to report that for the first time in his tenure his department is fully staffed. With a boost in funding from city council, RVA311’s ranks increased from 17 to 25 people. This has allowed the department to extend their hours and to implement an automated call back system. Briel says that they also plan to implement an after-call survey soon.

The meeting also featured a live demo on RVA311.com, which emphasized the benefits of creating a profile on the site. A user profile isn’t needed to submit requests, but logging in gives the ability for residents to track their own requests and to upvote others. Upvotes signal that multiple people share the same request, which has potential to save city departments time and resources by cutting down on duplicate tickets.

Dig into the data

When logged in, RVA311 users can also look at “Insights” — a tool for investigating requests that was initially built for city council members. There are several filters for breaking down the data, such as by district, neighborhood, and department. In the 4th district, for example, requests for leaf removal are the top category, and not surprisingly those requests peak in December. For Breil, this transparency is part of his goal for “democratization of access” and making the requests of Richmonders heard “regardless of who you are or who you know”.

ABOVE: Peter Breil, Director of Citizen Service and Response, showcases the capabilities of the RVA311 website for 4th district residents.