Audit of Chicago Department of Transportation Service Requests

Executive Summary

The audit found that the Department exceeded its performance goals for three of the five services, but failed to meet its goals for pothole repair and “street lights all out” in all three of the years we reviewed. We were encouraged to find that CDOT actively monitors its performance using weekly management reports and was aware, prior to this audit, that it had not met its targets for pothole and street light repair from 2010 to 2012. In striving to reach its goals, CDOT concurs with the OIG’s recommendations to both work with the Office of Budget and Management to address staffing concerns and continue to assign employees to priority services.

The audit also evaluated the accuracy of publicly reported completion rates for service requests submitted through the City’s 311 system in 2012. The OIG surveyed two separate web-tools hosted by the City – Service Delivery Metrics and Data Portal – for information on the five major services, concluding that this public data was incomplete and inaccurate. Specifically, we found that 53% of actual service requests in the five major categories were not reported on the Service Delivery Metrics website. As a result, the Department’s actual 2012 performance in pothole and street light repairs was worse than reported on the website. We further found that while the information actually posted on the Data Portal was accurate, it was incomplete. The Data Portal did not include any information on three of the five major CDOT service request
types, thereby limiting the public’s ability to see and analyze information on individual requests for those services.