The Growing Popularity of Vancouver's 3-1-1 Information Line

Since its 2009 launch, Vancouver’s 3-1-1 information line has proven popular among Vancouverites, with 2014 looking to be its biggest year yet.

The 3-1-1 information line was introduced in Vancouver in February 2009 as a means for citizens to request information and ask for non-emergency services such as garbage pickup or the removal of abandoned cars. Information obtained from the City of Vancouver data portal shows that since its first full year in service, traffic for the service has increased dramatically.

Year-on-year, traffic for the 3-1-1 contact center has continued to rise. In certain months, traffic for 2014 nearly doubles the traffic during 2010.

Alfred Liu, a supervisor at the 3-1-1 contact center believes the success comes from the accountability and simplicity the service provides. “I think it is probably one point of contact,” he said, ”the blue pages back inside the yellow pages of the white pages used to have several – maybe 1,400 different numbers, that’s all you’d have to look through and phone. This one, I guess you have one number for a point of contact with the city, and there is a little accountability and tracking as well.”

Vancouver resident Devin Ariyaratne believes the simplicity of the service is what makes it so appealing. “It's an easier way to communicate your problems," he said. "Like, instead of going to the city and waiting for the city to, you know, get back to you, you just call 3-1-1, right? It's like a more convenient method. All you have to do is dial a number."

(Film Student Devin Ariyaratne in Vancouver, B.C. working on a film project - taken by Chris Harcus)

The 3-1-1 contact center receives all kinds of different concerns, according to Liu. “[We receive] everything from garbage, to animal control, to booking inspections.”

Missed garbage disposal is currently ranked as the most frequent reason to call the information line. However, stats show that missed garbage pickups have dropped significantly since 2013. The 3-1-1 line may have been an attribute in lowering complaints.

Calls such as the missed garbage pick-ups are used to gain information about complaints and concerns of the citizens of Vancouver, as well as direct people to services that may assist them. “We primarily take information and channel it to either different departments or we will actually make service requests for different departments," Lui said.

Despite the growing popularity of the 3-1-1 contact centre, many Vancouver citizens still don’t know that the phone line exists. Vancouver resident Jade Lam believes that a lack of advertising is the cause of the problem. "More people should be educated on it,” she said, “Especially considering I haven’t seen it advertised anywhere.”

Devin Ariyaratne agrees. “The word-of-mouth isn’t strong,” he said.

However, Lam believes its popularity can be attributed to its ease of contact and Vancouverites need for information. “I think one reason [for its success] involves people wanting to know more about what’s going on,” she said.

“Ignorance isn’t bliss.”

Data Update 3

2) I asked some people I know who live in Vancouver about missed garbage pick-ups. I won't be using these since I'm changing my topic but these were the best three quotes I got:

"16,000 [complaints] still seems like a lot."
"No one wants to walk outside and see piles of garbage in front of their house."
"It's cramped where I live so one miss and it's like, where do I put this?"

3) One question I cannot answer with the data is the number of garbage trucks being used by the city and number of employees working at the waste disposal plants. This might explain why the number of missed garbage complaints have gone down. Their also might be a way to see if government spending on waste management services has increased. I might be able to find a government budget plan detailing sanitation spending on the City of Vancouver data portal. I could also check the City of Vancouver data portal for the number of employees hired between 2013 and 2014, but the number of extra trucks put into service would most likely not be listed. If I wanted to learn the number of extra trucks put in service I could probably just ask the waste management company for the data. If they refuse I could put forth an FOI request but I doubt that would be necessary.

*Note* I didn't expect incidents of missed garbage pick-ups to be going down so drastically so I'm changing my story to the success of the 3-1-1 information line and how it is becoming increasingly popular. I know it's a little late to change stories but I already have most of the data already cleaned from what I used for the garbage story but I didn't have time to do another Data Update. I just need to sort it differently.

Data Update 2

Lead:

Nine months into 2014, over 16,000 complaints have been directed to Vancouver's 3-1-1 city helpline regarding missed garbage, recycling, or organic waste pick ups. Citizens clearly aren't happy, so what is causing the missed garbage pick-ups and why is hasn't the situation improved?

Interview subject: The city of Vancouver has a directory of people who work in human resources and PR that manages the 3-1-1 helpline. The directory list which department the individual works in and the the individuals direct phone line rather then the randomly assigned 3-1-1 line. This is one of the names I found on the directory.

- Joanna Cheng

Link to sorted data. I put the data in a pivot table because the data I used is thousands of rows long.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx1CkPRwWPF9ekp1VThIeE5laGs/view?usp=sharing

Data Update #1

1.What dataset will you use for your final project? (include a link to the

dataset and claim it at the URL above).

311 Case Location

URL: http://data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/311caseLocationDetails.htm

2. Describe the dataset. What kind of data does it contain?

This dataset contains records of 3-1-1 calls made in Vancouver. The data details the date of the call, what the call was in regards to, and what street the call was made from.

3. How will you use this data as the basis for a news story?

I sorted the data and found out that for almost every month, missed garbage disposal has had the most complaints. Over 700 complaints were registered for missed garbage, recyclables, or organics waste in the last month alone. I have been removing this data from the monthly datasets in order to compile a massive dataset that focusses directly on complaints about missed disposal pick-ups. Using a pivot table, I plan on finding out whether the complaints have had any effect on lowering the amount of missed pickups by using a line graph to compare each month. I also hope to make a map detailing which areas featured the most missed pick-ups throughout the year.

4. Is there anything about your data that you don’t understand? (i.e.

what a column heading means). How will you find this out?

The dataset did not require any cleaning and the headings were easy to understand. All the headers had an in-depth explanation on the website.

5. What are some questions you hope to answer with your data? List at

least three. (you don’t need the answers at this point)

Which street has the most missed pick-ups?

Which month has the most missed pick-ups?

Have the complaints made by Vancouver citizens had any effect on decreasing missed pick-ups?

Assignment #1: Medical malpractice and the Harm of Healthcare

The series of articles titled, “Do No Harm,” published by the Las Vegas Sun, discusses the recorded incidents of preventable harm in hospitals throughout Nevada in 2009 to 2010. The article also uses four interactive graphs to communicate the data to the reader, such as a graph that allows users to see the type of complaints, as well as the number of complaints recorded by each hospital.

The Las Vegas Sun used data obtained via public records requests, as well as interviews with those who have experienced harm during a procedure at one of Nevada’s hospitals. All the data received is placed in the attached “source documents” link which holds 107 different documents cited throughout the piece. The article also has a compiled database of complaints received regarding Nevada hospitals that is available for the public to access.

The story contained many interactive elements, including the previously described complaint graph. Also featured is an interactive graph which displays the percentage increase or decrease of surgical injuries of each hospital over the last ten years. Another interactive element was a collage of faces of those who have suffered during hospital care. The user can click on a face in the collage to see a written description of the incident that occurred, as well as a video of the person talking about their experience. I thought this was a smart way to bring an emotional element to the story in an easy to understand and navigate matter. Another interactive graph allows the user to see the different kinds of incidents and number of occurrences in each Nevada hospital. The filters at the top of the page allow the user to refine their search to specific hospitals or incidents. This allows easy access to specific data, such as finding out that the UMC hospital had eight cases of accidentally leaving surgical tools inside of patients during 2008-2009. The last interactive graph refused to load for me so I am unable to comment on it.

I personally felt that these interactive elements added greatly to the piece. They allowed me to access the information in a matter that was easy to navigate and more compelling than simply reading the text off of a page. However, I feel these interactive elements would have been stronger if they were worked into the articles themselves. Having the articles and the interactive elements under separate tabs made the article feel a bit disjointed. No one wants to be constantly swapping tabs while trying to get immersed in an article.

If this story was to be localized, I feel a Vancouver journalist would be able to get most of the information needed through FOI requests to the hospitals in question and interviews with those who have suffered while in a hospitals care. The data from the FOI request would most likely not contain names or addresses of the individuals due to privacy purposes.