ABSTRACT
When Michael Bloomberg was campaigning to become mayor of New York City, he “noticed a leaking fire hydrant and asked one of his aides who to call to get it fixed,” and was surprised “to discover that he had to wade through 14 pages of listings just to track down the right number to call to report the leak” (Deloitte Research, 2008, p. 14). This experience transformed Bloomberg and pushed him to implement a number of innovations once he became New York City’s mayor, including a 311 system (a non-emergency version of 911) to improve the citizen-government communication channels—and ultimately citizen satisfaction. The implementation of these innovations improves constituent services, satisfaction, and responsiveness (Reddick, 2010), while also increasing employee efficiency, productivity, and “problem-solving capacity” (Hartley, Sørensen, & Torfing, 2013, p. 821).
