Residents now can access online data concerning public works services
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Breaking new ground in customer service, the City has published the monthly performance statistics of its Department of Public Works. Available online through the City website, the first set of data posts the DPW performance numbers for the month of July.

The public now can see how the DPW service levels fared for 46 different services. Areas of coverage include school building repair, roadway services, trash removal and water/sewer repairs. The expected amount of time to complete the service request is listed next to each service type and each case of late service delivery is captured in the report. The City, through its SomerStat office and 311 Constituent Services Department, collects and evaluates this information on a constant basis in order to identify service inefficiencies and develop strategies to improve those service levels.

“We take customer service extremely seriously here and my view is our departments need to own their performance numbers,” said Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone. “We plan on publishing monthly numbers from multiple departments, but we’ve started with DPW because that is where a lot of the meat and potatoes work of running a city occurs. We have a website, we collect a lot of data, and there’s no reason why the public should not also be able to see those performance numbers.”

The data can be found on the City’s ACE customer service page (http://www.somervillema.gov/ace). ACE stands for “Accurate Courteous Easy,” which are the guiding principles of Somerville’s municipal customer service effort.

“The people who live in this city are our customers and we should give them customer service as good or better than anything they experience in the private sector,” Curtatone said. “That is why we have live people to answer the calls to our 311 constituent services information line instead of an automated recording and why we recently launched a 311 iPhone app. Our aim is to raise the bar on what kind of services you expect from your local government.”

Commissioner of Public Works Stan Koty expressed confidence that his department is ready to step up to the challenge.

“It’s a brave, new world when it comes to government,” he said. “How well public works does its job has a direct impact on people’s lives. It used to be that public officials were nervous to provide residents with any kind of transparency, but people want to know and it’s up to us to deliver a good product.”

The Mayor and the Commissioner both recognize that not every service is going to show a perfect performance level.

“Our overall number of 87.5% on-time performance for July is pretty good, but the public is going to see that there are areas where we need to improve,” Curtatone said. “Sometimes there might a good reason for a service delay, like a broken piece of equipment or weather factors beyond our control, but we should be held accountable for making sure a poor monthly performance in a given area is an isolated event. On top of that, as we publish the numbers every month, our residents will be able to track whether we are improving in our areas of weakness. This is how government should work. Our job is to be transparent, not mysterious.”