About calls for city services
Summary
Each day, Washington residents make hundreds of requests to city officials — from reporting malfunctioning traffic lights to asking for bulk trash collection. In this section of EveryBlock, we publish recent calls from across the city, so you can find out when they occur near you.
The requests are reported by the Washington's Citywide Call Center, which is reachable by calling 311 in the city and (202) 727-1000 from elsewhere. Each report includes the request's date and location, the agency that responded (the Department of Public Works, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Public Health or the city's Traffic Control Center). Each report includes the request's type —parking meter repair, streetlight repair, alley cleaning, etc. — the request's status (open, closed, etc.) and the resolution, if any (nothing found, repairs completed, signal repaired, etc.).
In some cases, the request has been assigned a priority (medium, emergency, low, etc.), and the city also provides information about when the request was made, if it is resolved or if it is due to be resolved. In some cases, the data includes notes from city workers.
Note that some requests are made by city employees and not residents.
Source
The data comes from the 311 service request feed on Washington's Data Catalog. The city updates the database every few minutes, and we at EveryBlock retrieve new data once an hour.
Is there anything else I should know about the data?
The city changed the way it publishes 311 and service call data in August 2009. Much of the information is the same, but the city started releasing more types of requests and cataloged some things differently.
The following disclaimer appears on the city's Web site:
"The data made available here has been modified for use from its original source, which is the Government of the District of Columbia. Neither the District of Columbia Government nor the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) makes any claims as to the completeness, accuracy or content of any data contained in this application; makes any representation of any kind, including, but not limited to, warranty of the accuracy or fitness for a particular use; nor are any such warranties to be implied or inferred with respect to the information or data furnished herein. The data is subject to change as modifications and updates are complete. It is understood that the information contained in the dataset is being used at one's own risk."
