Trends in COVID-19 School Related Inquiries Using 311 New York City Open Data

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) school-related information New York City residents sought through the 311 Call Center. July to November inquiries were downloaded from the NYC Open Data website for 2018-2020. Calls were categorized as related to "Schools", "Access", "Food", "Hospitals", "Transportation", and "Unemployment". Overall call types, and among school-related calls, detailed call types, were compared over the years, using chi-squared tests. School-related inquiries increased by 71% from 2018 to 2020. During 2020, the most common (49%, n = 22,471) call description was "Coronavirus and Schools", encompassing calls about learning options, safety, and resources. Spikes in these calls corresponded to official announcements, including those about Fall reopening plans (August 31: n = 678; September 1: n = 624) and schedules and staffing (September 16th: n = 1043; September 17th: n = 713), and after the start of in-person learning (September 21: n = 680). This study demonstrates that as government officials updated NYC schooling plans for Fall 2020, there were increased concerns among NYC residents. Future COVID-19 schooling changes need to be conveyed clearly and disseminated effectively in order to avoid confusion about NYC's pandemic learning strategy and to address health and safety concerns.

Non-emergency responses in the 311 system during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study of Kansas city

“…Compared to existing literature, the share of covid-related requests that we found for Kansas City of 4.3% is similar to the share of covid-specific calls in New York City (4.14%) and the share of pandemic-specific requests in Orange County Florida (5.15%) [20,23] . Like Pamukcu et al, 311 data in Kansas City also showed declines in requests in comparable categories to street conditions and traffic signal conditions [22] .…”

“…If successful, it can be used as a framework to improve resilience and crisis response strategies. There are a few studies on the patterns of 311 systems during COVID-19, focusing mainly on New York City, Dallas, and Orange County [20,21] . In New York City, the 311 systems added specific categories and descriptors for calls related to the pandemic, which greatly helped capture the reaction of its citizen to the crisis and associated responses taken by the municipality agencies.…”

“…In New York City, the 311 systems added specific categories and descriptors for calls related to the pandemic, which greatly helped capture the reaction of its citizen to the crisis and associated responses taken by the municipality agencies. Lieberman-Cribbin et al, documented the increase in a spike in cumulative calls and covid-related calls in New York City, most of which were placed to get more information on the coronavirus, its symptoms, prevention measures, and testing locations [20] . In addition, Eugene et al, also reported a 71% increase in school-related calls during 2020, reflecting the concerns of its residents on the updated schooling plans for the Fall [21] .…”

Understanding the relationship between normative records of appeals and government hotline order dispatching: a data analysis method

“…Social governance has been considered a two-way management model in the big data era (Bernhard et al ., 2018). A government hotline is one way to run social governance Such public service facilities around the globe are 311 citizen service systems in the USA (Agonafir et al , 2022; Feng and Jiao, 2021; Rosés et al , 2021; Biresselioglu et al , 2022; Cao et al , 2014; Eugene et al ., 2021), the Preston DWP call center system in the United Kingdom, the New Delhi “Kisan” call center in India (Wang, 2015) and China's 12,345 government hotline. While governments collect information on several subjects related to public opinions in the text form of appeals, complaints and suggestions, there appear several issues such as dispatching work orders, classification, standardization, crunching and so on.…”