If you’ve ever made a request to Augusta 311 and the work took months or was never done, the city is attempting to fix that.
Augusta departments are being asked to complete service-level agreements, in an effort to hold staff accountable for doing their jobs, officials said Tuesday.
The action came out of a recent maintenance workshop. Augusta 311 Director Kelli Walker noted that some departments close out requests prior to completing them, or don’t complete them at all.
Service-level agreements set out the specific obligations of time, quality and cost for a task.
“We don’t have these in place, so we’re not keeping our departments accountable, so to speak, because there’s no accountability measures,” said Commissioner Stacy Pulliam, who put the item on Tuesday’s agenda.
So far while serving as a commissioner, “85% of my workload is micromanaging and keeping up with grounds maintenance,” she said.
The agreements will create a baseline, for which exceptions can be made under extenuating circumstances, Interim Administrator Takiyah Douse said.
The agreements “would one allow departments not only to gauge the performance of their staff, but also to determine exactly how long it takes to complete a service,” Douse said.
“This would be information we could communicate to the public, so the public can have a reasonable expectation of when their expected task will be completed,” she said.
The issue of closing requests is particularly problematic because the 311 system may send an automated email stating a request has been completed, when it actually has not, Douse said at the workshop.
One of the biggest problem areas is Engineering, which oversees most right-of-way maintenance, such as mowing ditches or repairing potholes or storm drains.
Engineering maintenance supervisor Charlie Gay said at the workshop the department converts the requests into work orders, which it is able to track.
Much additional discussion took place at the workshop, including department heads stating they disagree with Douse’s proposal to consolidate maintenance under one department.
Augusta’s administrator is generally at a disadvantage because most department directors report directly to the commission.
Commissioner Brandon Garrett asked Tuesday if the “real issue” with service is the city systems’ inability to communicate with each other.
Walker said that was not the case. Garrett asked what the issue is. Walker did not answer, but someone behind the dais muttered “the user.”
In conjunction with the service-level agreements, Walker stressed that departments must not close out work requests prematurely.
“These requests need to remain open until the work gets done,” she said. “Once that request is closed, the communication to that citizen is cut off.”
Augusta 311 received 50,690 service requests last year, with the most, 66%, involving garbage collection.
Garbage pickup, which the city contracts out, is the only area with a functioning service-level agreement.
The second-most common request, with 5,955, went to Engineering.
Walker said many of the calls 311 receives are repeat callers checking on the status of their request.
Data for this year was skewed by the May cyber attack, which led to the loss of data from January through early July for the number of open requests, according to a handout.
The city Administrative Services committee approved the requirement Tuesday, so it moves to the full commission for final approval. The departments are expected to have their agreements in by Dec. 31.
