AROUND THE PARISH

Mayor Holden announces 311 Citizen Requests for Service data now accessible to public

For more information, contact:
Eric Romero, Department of Information Services: (225) 389-3070
Susan Boudreaux, Mayor’s Office: (225) 389-5101
Michelle McCalope, Mayor’s Office: (225) 389-7957


As part of the City-Parish’s ongoing commitment to improve public sector digital innovation while fostering government transparency and civic engagement, Mayor-President Melvin “Kip” Holden announced today the addition of the 311 Citizen Requests for Service data to the Open Data BR portal. The data is now easily accessible to the general public through the Mayor’s open data initiative.
The data features all citizen requests for service submitted through the City-Parish 311 Call Center, including requests submitted by phone as well as online via 311.brla.gov and through the Red Stick 311 mobile application.

“Our efforts to transform Baton Rouge into a leading digital city and hub for technology and innovation are directly tied to how we’re able to open up government for citizens to better understand how and why government operates; for technologists and developers to use in developing real-world, data-based applications; and for all our public sector agencies to utilize in making decisions on a daily basis,” said Mayor Holden. “When it comes to government, knowledge is power – and open data, freely accessible to the public, is knowledge. By moving our 311 data into an open data environment, we’re taking the next step in our efforts to create a more open and digital city while providing another data-based input that puts knowledge in the hands of our citizens.”

Within the 311 Citizen Requests for Service system, more than 100 individual “service request types” are used to capture, organize, and route each individual request for service or reported issue, which can range from tall grass and damaged traffic signs to trash on private property and missing garbage carts. Earlier this year, the Department of Information Services led an effort to streamline the manner in which these requests for service were captured and managed by public works staff, resulting in a much more efficient system for both routing and response purposes, including the launch of the Red Stick 311 web platform and mobile application. As such, this dataset only contains full service request records dating back to January 1, 2016. Moving forward, all citizen requests for service will be uploaded on a daily basis to this dataset within the Open Data BR web portal.

Launched in January 2015 and established as a model for how mid-sized communities can approach this concept of open data, Open Data BR serves as Baton Rouge’s official open data portal with a repository of nearly 100 public datasets, charts, filtered views, and more ranging from EBRP Tax Roll and animal control incident data to police and traffic incident data. For more information and to explore Open Data BR, visit http://data.brla.gov.

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