Jeffrey Edwards, Harrisburg’s director of IT, left, and Fred Barber, network administrator for the city, at a press conference Thursday in the mayor’s conference room in city hall.
Harrisburg is on track to have a new 311 information system for non-emergency government services, Mayor Eric Papenfuse said Thursday, thanks to the state Public Utility Commission’s approval of a city petition to administer the three-digit dialing code.
The 311 code, whose use will be restricted to Harrisburg residents, will connect callers to a centralized, automated directory of city services. Under the existing system, residents either would need to look up the numbers of individual city departments or, as often happened, would simply dial 911 with non-emergency calls, tying up the county’s dispatchers.
Papenfuse recommended the adoption of a 311 system during his campaign for office last year. In March, the city submitted a petition to the PUC, who announced its approval Thursday following a 5-0 vote by its commissioners.
At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Papenfuse suggested the PUC’s approval had come more swiftly than expected, although Robin Tilley, an information specialist with the commission, later said that the city didn’t actually require PUC approval to use the 311 code.
Papenfuse also added Thursday that certain infrastructure upgrades necessary for running the system were well underway. In the next two to three months, the city expects to replace its phone system with one that will be able to accommodate 311 calls. The city also recently replaced its previous Internet provider, Windstream Communications, with Comcast. According to Fred Barber, a network administrator in the city’s IT department, the change will both improve city hall’s download speeds by a factor of 75 and save around $3,000 per year.
The 311 dialing code, assigned for use nationwide by the FCC in 1997, has been implemented in cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. Tilley, from the PUC, explained that the code would work for landlines located in Harrisburg, as well as some, but not all, cell phones, depending on the caller’s provider and the location of its towers. Cities can also provide a direct 10-digit number to cell phone users in case the 311 code doesn’t work, Tilley said.
On Thursday, Papenfuse held up the plans for the 311 system as an example of how his administration has prioritized communication with city residents. He also used the press conference to celebrate an “exciting rebranding” of Harrisburg, in the form of a five-minute music video, “Harrisburg Be Happy,” that was released earlier this week.
Produced by volunteers, including Ryan Grigsby, who designed the city’s new website, Cory Cross, who provided camera equipment free of charge, and Michelle Green, a local director, it features clips of city residents and officials, including Papenfuse, the police chief and the City Council president, dancing to the song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. On Wednesday, the video was posted to YouTube, where as of this writing it had registered more than 2,500 views.
