Richmond, Virginia Upgrades 311 Service

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Richmond, Virginia is making a big change to its 311 non-emergency reporting system. The city’s new 311 service is fully online and replaces a call center that was previously only open 10 hours a day.

In order to make the change, the city is working with AvePoint, a local technology company. Richmond’s 311 will now be powered by AvePoint Citizen Services, a cloud-based platform designed to support a wide variety of constituent communications. Residents will now be able to submit 311 requests online, over the phone and on mobile. The platform also includes analytics capabilities so city officials can view reports about how many calls are coming in, subject matter and geographic area.

The platform runs on the Microsoft Azure Cloud.

Six Richmond government agencies will hook into RVA 311, centralizing requests and resolution tracking for core functions such as public utilities, public works, police, finance, social services, and planning and development to start.

Only July 1, the City of Richmond will launch an entire department dedicated to the management of RVA 311 – the Department of Citizen Service and Response. When a non-emergency request is submitted in the platform – a broken streetlight, pothole, or damaged infrastructure – Citizen Services will instantly tag the location information and automatically routes it to the appropriate agencies and field technicians to accelerate assessments and services.

AvePoint opened its Richmond office in 2016. The company currently employs approximately 100 people in Richmond.