Does 311 further privilege the haves vs. the have-nots? What should 311 do to offset these risks if they exist?
In 2015/16 Bryant Renaud and Nick Ryan set out to determine whether Boston's 311 system is being used by members of historically advantaged and disadvantaged groups proportionately. This repo contains scripts we wrote to get at this question. Having identified some mildly-worrying indicators of inequality, we moved on to analyze what options the 311 office could pursue to best offset these risks, including whether to invest more in uptake of the 311 phone line or use of the app, etc. This repo also contains scripts we wrote to analyze and visualize the potential impacts of these hypothetical options.
While this work was done at the request of Boston's 311 office, we did it as a capstone project and were not compensated or hired by Boston in any way.
