San Francisco and Partnering Cities Launch 311 Open Source

Mayor Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday, March 3, the launch of a unified open source standard enabling any local government to connect its 311 system to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

The Open311 API (Application Programming Interface) project combined the efforts of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle and numerous other cities, which will all have access to the Open311 later next week. For a city to offer 311 services through a site like Twitter or Facebook, IT workers have typically spent months establishing standards that meet security regulations and align with the social networks' own requirements, according to Chris Vein, the CIO of San Francisco.