When tech takes out the trash: How the Service Innovation Team is modernizing City services

News Article

Digital Services highlights the work of the Service Innovation Team, and how they're making City services more intuitive, accessible, and responsive to community needs.

If you saw an overflowing trash can on the sidewalk at your favorite park, who would you call? Is this a job for the Parks Department? The trash company? The Bureau of Transportation? Should you even call anyone? What if the line is busy? What if you're busy?

When the public needs something from their city, requesting a service isn't always straightforward. A city like Portland can be big and complex, and designing a way to request reliable, accessible, and effective services can end up being, in itself, another service.

So, while emptying a trash can might seem like simple math, it's really a complex equation that involves many people, processes, and technologies.

One group helping to solve this equation is the Service Innovation Team.

What's the Service Innovation Team?

The Service Innovation Team (SIT) is a product team that modernizes and improves the public's customer experience with the City.

So much of the public's interaction with the City involves technology. Because of that, SIT includes team members from Digital Services, which specializes in software and web technologies, and Corporate Geographic Information Systems (CGIS), which focuses on spatial technologies like maps and place-based data.

These two groups combine with members of PDX 311, the City's information and referral customer service team. Together, SIT reimagines the community's customer service experience.

To do that, SIT works with different subject matter experts, web staff, and service providers to understand the process and flow of a community member's online report or request. This knowledge helps SIT send the community member's requests to the right groups within the City.

Innovating in this way can help address complex community needs, like emptying a trash can at a public park. But the challenge isn't just out there on the sidewalk. It's also within the structure of City government. Often, a single submission for a service involves numerous bureaus and programs.

"It's been a people and technology effort," says Josh Gregor, Continuous Improvement Coordinator on SIT, describing the larger project of connecting service requests to different departments in the City. Someone might call, email, or fill out a form online, but who delivers their message?

In many cases, that job is handled by PDX 311.

What's PDX 311?

PDX 311 is the Portland community's first point of contact with local government. The service is staffed by about 30 people, and is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. By calling 3-1-1 or emailing them, the public can request information or register for different services. Each time a member of the public makes contact, PDX 311 creates a new ticket.

But figuring out a way to organize and track the requests they receive is a huge undertaking. PDX 311 not only has to help solve the customer's issue, but also to report progress internally, and then back to the public.

In 2024, PDX 311 generated about 400,000 tickets.

"How can we take this landscape of intake and centralize and simplify it?" Gregor asked himself when he began this work. "How can we make it better for the community and consolidate the intake process?"

How did SIT begin?

The original purpose of the Service Innovation Team was to help modernize how the community could interact with local government. In 2018, as the City began migrating the website from PortlandOregon.gov to Portland.gov, many pages and applications needed to be consolidated, rebuilt, or archived.

"The old website had everything from homeless campsite reporting to applying for a chili cook-off," said Gregor.

A screenshot of how the noise complaint reporting form appears on a mobile device.

As the website migration began, SIT was facing a forms system that was nearly 20 years old-ancient by internet standards. That form system, like others, allows the public to enter information on the website and initiate a service request. While the old forms were great for their era, other surrounding web technologies and the City itself had outgrown them.

So, SIT set to work on updating and modernizing these online forms and their many connections behind the scenes. The migration was an opportunity to center the community's experience in the design of these services. This means they could make sure that City services are intuitive, accessible, and valuable to the public.

And there weren't just a few forms to update. There were about 1,400.

What does SIT do?

Seeing the heap of work ahead, SIT had an opportunity to redesign the Report a Problem with a Public Trash Can service. Using an interactive map, community members can now report overflowing or damaged trash cans across the city with a click or a tap.

The redesigned trash reporting form makes it easy to pinpoint issues.

Different features of the online trash map, like the coloring of icons or the list of collection days, show the team's focus on the user's experience. Every little detail provides valuable information or makes it easier to use.

Behind the scenes, too, was a chance for SIT to innovate. A community member's report through a form like the trash map can now create a ticket in backend systems. These tickets are then automatically sorted to notify the appropriate department within the City. Systems can also notify third-party organizations who partner with the City to deliver services.

Because there's a centralized record of the request, PDX 311 can track the issue and follow up with the community member if needed. This approach ensures both transparency and a smart use of City resources.

A modern service like this means that no matter which team needs to respond, the public doesn't need to worry about contacting the right team.

"The old methodology was based on bureau structure," says Greg Clapp, a software developer on SIT. "You had to dig into the website to find the right reporting form. But the community doesn't care about the structure of the government. They just want to report an overflowing street drain."

What's next for SIT?

A tool like the trash map can serve as a model for work that SIT continues to do. While developing new web tools that help get the job done, the team forges new relationships with different groups at the City.

"The web forms provide for a repeatable process that only gets more intelligent over time," says Gregor.

Over time, SIT has upgraded services like requesting ADA access for programs and information, applying for a cooling unit, reporting a campsite, and contacting elected officials.

They continue their work by proposing technical innovations and process improvements. Their efforts serve a vision where community members can easily and effectively access local government information and services, regardless of language, ability, or resources.

Making it easier for the public to request services makes government more responsive. A more responsive government gains the public's trust and helps a city to become more vibrant.

Judging by the success of the trash map, Clapp feels optimistic about a stronger partnership with the community and government accessibility more generally. Once the trash gets taken out, there's still plenty left to do.

"If you make it easy to communicate with government," he says, "people will do it."

Note: Josh and Greg were invited to speak at the keynote panel at FormFest 2024, a national conference of professionals who use human-centered service design approaches to improve the customer experience and make organizations more efficient.

You can watch that discussion here.