I interviewed Donald Stickney, manager for the City of Minneapolis' 311 call center this week for an article about CRM deployment and I learned some interesting things.

For Minneapolis, the 311 number wasn't just going to relieve the burden on the 911 emergency system. It was going to take the place of about 275 different local phone numbers in the "blue pages" section of the Minneapolis phone book.

The city has a nice 5 minute video describing the goals and implementation of the 311 system on its website: City of Minneapolis 311 video. The video, in which Mr. Stickney talks about the new service, is a helpful overview of what a 311 system can do in general.

The beauty of Minneapolis' system is that calls are answered by live operators who, instead of transfering calls to other departments, fill out reports and give callers tracking numbers. Simple information requests can be handled with the help of a knowledge base. This gives citizens a greater amount of control. It really opens the city's dozens of departments up.

The most novel thing about 311 lines to me is the way they tend to use live agents instead of IVRs. I'm so accustomed to automation now that I was actually surprised when Mr. Stickney told me that the city expected to answer calls with human beings.

This is an odd model of efficiency for a bureaucracy. Odd because we used to expect this kind of transparency and smooth operation from money-making businesses. It's ironic to me then, that businesses -- and I'm thinking about non-municipal utilities like cable companies and mobile phone service providers -- have lots to learn about service and efficiency from city governments.