Delivering citizen services in a time of crisis.
Done.
The City of Houston’s citizen service helpline became an emergency management tool for evacuees in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and during Hurricane Rita.
Breakthrough: Withstanding a Disaster
Because the City of Houston and Unisys built a call center with robust and flexible tools, the center was able to provide service to 250,000 Katrina evacuees.
Secure Business Operation
Citizen helpline.
Innovation Metrics
Call volume to the 3-1-1 Houston Service Helpline has more than doubled, with no disruption to operations.
Providing Service When It’s Needed Most
With nearly 2 million city residents and 5 million in the metropolitan region, Houston is the fourth largest city in the nation. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city saw an influx of 250,000 evacuees — approximately 100,000 of whom have now made Houston their permanent home.
Fortunately, Houston had partnered with Unisys in 2001 to launch the 3-1-1 Houston Service Helpline — a consolidated call center that provides Houstonians with one easy-to-remember telephone number for quick, simple, reliable access to city services. Because of the city’s foresight, the center was built with the technology, telephony and disaster recovery tools to withstand emergency events — and it has done just that.
Houston’s 3-1-1 Director, Gloria Bingham, explains how her city was able to come to the aid of Katrina evacuees: “As evacuees fled to Houston from New Orleans, there was a real need for basic services. Our Mayor, Bill White, met with the FEMA director to discuss how Houston could help FEMA deliver these services. The 3-1-1 call center was the most obvious choice because it already had the capacity to accommodate an increase in staff and call volume.”
“The planning for 3-1-1 was very well thought out,” continues Ms. Bingham. “When Unisys helped us with the initial implementation, they recognized the need to build beyond our requirements at the time — ensuring that we could handle an increased load. They also created a training room that is an exact duplicate of the call center set-up, so FEMA was able to move right into that space and begin operations straight away, with no interruption to our existing service.”
Implementing Operations Without Delay
With all the necessary tools already in place, FEMA immediately began operating its help line to serve the evacuees from New Orleans — providing information on housing, schools and social services.
“The City of Houston worked hand in hand with FEMA,” states Ms. Bingham. “The flexibility of the 3-1-1 system enabled us to track the services that the city provided to the evacuees and report that information to FEMA for reimbursement. There is no way we could have done what we did here in Houston without a 3-1-1 system in place like this one. It can be easily translated to what we need or want it to be in the heat of the moment.”
Indeed, the city would once again rely on the 3-1-1 system during Hurricane Rita — this time for citizens evacuating Houston.
According to Ms. Bingham, “Having just experienced the aftermath of Katrina, we were a bit more prepared for Rita. Our Mayor decided that co-locating the call center for the Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro) with our 3-1-1 center could streamline the city’s response, so we brought the Metro call center into our facility to take calls from people who needed to be evacuated from Houston. With Metro staff located right here, there was no time wasted from when we received calls to getting buses and vans out to those people. And again, the system had the capacity for the additional calls and made it easy to log where Metro went and who they picked up.”
Continuing Operations in the Face of Disaster
During Rita, call center volume increased from 10,000 calls per day to more than 21,000 calls per day. Because the call center was built with redundancy to withstand disasters, it never lost power during the hurricane. As Ms. Bingham recalls, “The city was in disarray, people couldn’t get to work — but the call center was a consistent resource for citizens to call and get information or request help.”
Working closely with the city’s Emergency Management personnel — including police, fire & and medical emergency executives — Ms. Bingham ensured that citizens with special needs got the services they needed during the hurricane.
“As we got calls from wheelchair-bound individuals and others who could not be transported out of Houston via regular means, we faxed the necessary information to the Emergency Management folks,” says Ms. Bingham, “and they were able to get those people out of harm’s way.”
Applying Lessons Learned
Houston was one of the first U.S. cities to take advantage of a Federal Communications Commission rule to reserve 3-1-1 as a non-emergency government service number, opening the center in 2001. At that time, Ms. Bingham says, “Twenty-seven percent of the calls going to 9-1-1 were non-emergency related. Each year since then, that percentage has decreased as citizens have become more aware of 3-1-1 as a resource for situations that are urgent but not emergencies.” As a result, 9-1-1 dispatchers are no longer distracted from responding to true emergency events.
“When 3-1-1 first opened,” Ms. Bingham goes on, “we were averaging 4,000 calls per day. Since Katrina, that has gone up to 8,000 to 10,000 calls per day — reaching more than 21,000 during Rita. Today, we’re still handling thousands of calls that are strictly related to Katrina evacuees with questions regarding FEMA’s housing voucher program, gas and utility bills, and other such concerns.”
At the same time, the 3-1-1 center is continuing to provide the services for which it was originally built. In 2001, Ms. Bingham proclaimed that, “Citizens no longer have to navigate through more than 700 phone numbers published in the local directory to access a specific service. Instead, they simply dial the three-digit number for any non-emergency situation — whether it’s to report a barking dog, an abandoned vehicle or high grass; to request recycle bins for a new home; or voice an opinion. From the citizens’ standpoint, this is the best thing the City of Houston has ever done. They have all city services right at their fingertips, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Ms. Bingham says that, having experienced the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, “We have learned some lessons. I am now working with emergency management, Metro and even local cab companies to ensure that we have thought everything out so that, in the future, we can direct calls to the appropriate agency right away. We don’t want another hurricane — but if it happens we’ll be even more prepared.”
Houston should serve as a model for the entire country, regardless of the type of disaster that may befall a region. The city built a call center with the flexibility and capacity to help incoming and existing citizens in a time of crisis. As Ms. Bingham exclaims, “I can’t even imagine what would have happened if all these people moved here and we didn’t have this call center.”
Customer at a glance
City of Houston
Reports to
Mayor’s Office
Mission
Mayor is responsible for the general management of the City and for seeing that all laws and ordinances are enforced.
Objective
Provide easy citizen access to services. Reduce non-emergency calls to 9-1-1.
Results
One-number, one-stop citizen services.
Population served
2 million
About Unisys in the Public Sector
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