About Open311 Status

Open311 Status monitors and aggregates the status of dozens of Open311 API endpoints, providing benchmarks and comparative insights across cities and implementations for:

  • Upness: the API is currently available
  • Uptime: the availability of the API over time
  • Performance: how quickly the servers respond to API requests
  • Comprehensiveness: how fully the API is implemented/adopted; e.g. the number of service types that can be submitted through the API
  • Utilization: how much the 311 service being used; e.g. the number of service requests submitted

Currently Open311status is unable to do the following despite it being very valuable:

  • Accuracy: the API reflects the “ground-truth” status of a particular service request; e.g. if the API reports the status of a ticket as “closed”, the pothole has been filled or the request explicitly rejected. We have observed some systems will report a ticket as “closed” when a separate internal work-order has been created but no externally visible action has actually been taken.

Why is this important?

Comparative API performance data helps city leadership and 3rd-party application developers make better decisions about how they implement and support Open311:

It addresses common questions I saw from city leadership and application developers:

  • City Leadership: How can we benchmark our configuration and adoption against other cities? How can we verify the standard of service we’re delivering?
  • Application Developers: What cities should we target for building our products? Am I the only one experiencing problems with my integration?

Cities have various goals when adopting Open311 that can be affected by its implementation:

  • Greater digital accessibility to 311 services, allowing residents to submit issues and check their status online or through mobile apps. Adoption and usage of Open311 powered applications is affected by advertising, outreach and education.
  • Improved efficiency in the delivery of 311 allowing self-serve access to tickets and reducing call-center usage Open311-powered APIs may not make available all requests for self-service usage and may be configured to not accurately reflect the state of an ticket or issue.
  • More effective delivery of city services by providing more precise resident feedback, including images and GPS data. Implementation decisions can limit the features available within the API.
  • Expand innovation by providing turn-key 3rd-party integration with city 311 services. The performance and uptime of the API can affects whether application developers invest in integrations.