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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Manhattan Style 2 | 311, Dysfunctionality & Maps

This post is the sequel of the story of Manhattan Style #1.
Yesterday, after the banging and pounding noise incapacitated me from performing any work, I called 311. I did not have much hope about their problem solving capabilities but felt like there was no other course of action. I spent almost one frustrating hour with the 311 operator, initially describing the same simple situation several times. Finally the next step: I had to provide the address, which could not be found by the operator. I mentioned several times that the address was easily found in Google Maps, mapquest, Bing; yet she could not find it.
A few hours after ending this frustrating useless reach for help I received an email from 311 that my action request was closed. No solution to my problems but an addition to the great mysteries of the universe:
Why a major city self defined "service" line does not use maps available to any of us common mortals?
Another question: how much of our tax money is allocated to fund their GIS map system which is not even able, to locate an address easily find in any common map system?