Accenture helps New York launch 311 service center

Accenture Ltd. has deployed a 311 service center for New York City that gives citizens around-the-clock access to information and services, the company announced today.

Under a contract awarded last July, Accenture of Hamilton, Bermuda, has worked closely with the New York Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication to deploy new operational processes, a call center facility, customer contact software applications and a knowledge base covering more than 6,000 aspects of city government services.

The 311 citizen service center cost $25 million, said Jonathan Werbell, a city spokesman.

Accenture led a team that included Sun Microsystems Inc., Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc., Siebel Systems Inc., iXP Corp., Motorola Inc., Cisco Inc., Nortel Networks Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., Information Methods Inc., Winbourne & Costas, SDG Corp., Interwoven Inc. and Oracle Corp.

The system also will be used by more than 100 New York police department precincts.

The 311 number is designed to give New York residents access to non-emergency municipal services and information and make it faster and easier for them to contact a specific city department hotline.

When residents dial 311 on their telephones, they are connected to a representative who can help them obtain directory assistance for local government, make arrangements for municipal services, report quality-of-life issues to the police department and even leave messages for the mayor.

In the next phase of the project, the city's portal will be enhanced to provide parallel self-service capabilities that will be integrated with the 311 center.

Accenture has more that 75,000 employees and annual sales of $11.6 billion.