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Long-Delayed $2.5M Upgrade for Tulsa 311 Still Not Ready for Primetime

Matt Trotter
/
KWGS

Tulsa’s new 311 system still isn’t up and running after more than a year of delays, but it might be ready by the end of the month.

The high-tech system from Verint has a mobile app, online chat and a voice response system. It was originally set for a summer 2015 launch, but that was delayed until mid-January. That date was then missed because of apparent software bugs.

Now, the servers keep crashing.

"They're bringing in their top two engineers. They're flying in from the U.K.," said City Customer Care Center Director Michael Radoff. "They'll be here sometime next week, and they're going to do an end-to-end review and analysis and audit of the system and try to get everything connected properly so that it's working consistently the way it's supposed to."

A lot of turnover within the company has slowed everything down.

"Our team — our IT team's done a fabulous job," Radoff said. "The people on our side have done everything they need to do, it's just been the vendor has had a hard time keeping up and getting everything connected and keeping it going."

Radoff told city councilors this week the delays are not costing the city any money, and in fact he’s withholding a significant amount from the vendor while the problems are fixed. There is no penalty for them missing the launch date.

"It's time. It's opportunity cost, right?" Radoff said. "I mean, we could be using this tool right now and doing great things for the citizens of the City of Tulsa, and the fact that we aren't is very frustrating to me."

The upgrade is meant to decrease the city’s response time to 311 calls and decrease the number of calls agents must handle, currently as many as 600,000 a year.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.