SF311 and its Open311 Write API
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
13 sourced claims on this page, none individually verified yet — turn on “Sources in the text” to see each one.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page
Outside apps can write into the city's work queue, not just read from it. San Francisco set 12 July 2025 as the shutdown date for that API; it was still answering in September 2026.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,216 documented projects · 🏙️ 9 more in San Francisco · 🪪 Digital government guide · 🏛️ Governance projects
San Francisco opened 311 in March 2007, folding more than 1,000 city phone numbers into one line. In May 2010 it agreed the Open311 GeoReport v2 specification jointly with Washington D.C., whose 311 API the standard grew out of, so outside apps can write into the city's work queue rather than only read from it. Cases since July 2008 are published nightly under a public-domain dedication. The city set 12 July 2025 as the shutdown date for that API; its public endpoint was still returning new requests in September 2026.
📊 Impact
872,426 service requests created in 2025, counted directly from the city's own open dataset: 534,032 through a mobile app (61%), 181,123 on the web (21%) and 149,652 by phone (17%), with 6,139 from agency integrations, 833 by Twitter or email, and 647 test or unlabelled rows.
🎓 Lesson
An API that only reads makes watchers; one that lets outsiders write makes competitors, and the city moved to shut its API the year a volunteer app began filing a visible share of some neighbourhoods' reports. Its own Controller had told SF311 in 2018 to tighten internal controls so that requests are accurately addressed and its published reports can be relied on.
Sources
Show 7 more sourcesShow fewer
📅 How old is the evidence?
Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2007. 8 of 12 sources carry a publication date, from 6 May 2010 to 12 January 2026.
When the sources were published
- Open311 (open standard community) · ngoOpen311 — GeoReport v2 Established and GeoReport v1 Goes Live (6 May 2010)
- Western City Magazine (League of California Cities) · pressWestern City Magazine — Taking Service to the Next Level With 311
- Open311 (open standard community) · ngoOpen311 — Highlights from the Open311 Ecosystem (21 June 2015)
- San Francisco Office of the Controller · oversight bodyOffice of the Controller, City Services Auditor — San Francisco 311: New Technology, Stronger Departmental Partnerships, and Robust Internal Controls Will Improve Customer Service (9 August 2018)
- San Francisco Public Works · city governmentSF Public Works Commission — correspondence log, 2–15 May 2025
- The San Francisco Standard · pressThe San Francisco Standard — His complaint app is way better than 311. The city is about to kill it (26 May 2025)
- NBC Bay Area · pressNBC Bay Area — Solve SF app linked to city's 311 may shut down after 5 months (27 May 2025)
- Hoodline · pressHoodline — San Francisco 311 buried in nearly 800,000 complaints (12 January 2026)
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 13 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence file · public beta 13 addressable claims, 12 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The file is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 13
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-ea60b310a26deb8d
quantitative
San Francisco opened 311 in March 2007
Sources carrying this claim
clm-6ba1d4e9ceb89cb5
quantitative
folding more than 1,000 city phone numbers into one line
Sources carrying this claim
clm-10b319ac7fa107e8
quantitative
In May 2010 it agreed the Open311 GeoReport v2 specification jointly with Washington D.C.
Sources carrying this claim
clm-c46bd8c164012770
quantitative
whose 311 API the standard grew out of
Sources carrying this claim
clm-bb33b76f4a967cf2
descriptive
so outside apps can write into the city's work queue rather than only read from it
Sources carrying this claim
clm-22221eb08ed9fe4e
quantitative
Cases since July 2008 are published nightly under a public-domain dedication
Sources carrying this claim
clm-acda1e377f5a7d99
quantitative
The city set 12 July 2025 as the shutdown date for that API
Sources carrying this claim
clm-9ca59d184745dda7
quantitative
its public endpoint was still returning new requests in September 2026
Sources carrying this claim
clm-dbe78ed5a5fdfaf2
quantitative
872,426 service requests created in 2025, counted directly from the city's own open dataset
Sources carrying this claim
clm-f630ef1117206e85
quantitative
534,032 through a mobile app (61%), 181,123 on the web (21%) and 149,652 by phone (17%)
Sources carrying this claim
clm-7b78915f23f5b188
quantitative
6,139 from agency integrations, 833 by Twitter or email, and 647 test or unlabelled rows
Sources carrying this claim
clm-e0ed8d2e7a727b75
descriptive
the city moved to shut its API the year a volunteer app began filing a visible share of some neighbourhoods' reports
Sources carrying this claim
clm-397882064b58869d
quantitative
Its own Controller had told SF311 in 2018 to tighten internal controls so that requests are accurately addressed and its published reports can be relied on
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
sha256:c8e646d291e223f38eb579c8c660c7baa83d39c07a528ce1bb2bd7c4b06f14c2
- 13
- of 13 claims mapped
- 12
- source dossiers
- 7
- publication dates recorded
- 7
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- SF311 Customer Service Center, Office of the City Administrator (City and County of San Francisco)
- Actor types
- city-government
- Funding model
- public
- Funding description
- Not recorded
- Cost
- Not recorded
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
12 source dossiers
SF311 Customer Service Center — About
- Stable source ID
src-c041d776510df862- Publisher
- Name not classified · sf.gov
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Operator page: SF311 was founded in 2007 under Mayor Gavin Newsom to replace a landscape of over 50 city agencies and more than 1,000 phone numbers with one number; it answers by phone in over 160 languages.
- Claims linked
Western City Magazine — Taking Service to the Next Level With 311
- Stable source ID
src-07a4b30bbb64e3b9- Publisher
- Name not classified · westerncity.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2014-06-01
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The League of California Cities' magazine (June 2014): the SF311 center launched in March 2007 and had answered its 16 millionth call by March 2014; service requests are published to the city's open data portal.
- Claims linked
Open311 — Highlights from the Open311 Ecosystem (21 June 2015)
- Stable source ID
src-2f75fe60d6bae0b0- Publisher
- Name not classified · open311.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2015-06-21
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Open311's own history: the standard 'first began with an API for Washington D.C.'s 311 system' and became a community under San Francisco's leadership with OpenPlans, Code for America and the White House.
- Claims linked
Open311 — GeoReport v2 Established and GeoReport v1 Goes Live (6 May 2010)
- Stable source ID
src-1995479a7d0204ff- Publisher
- Name not classified · open311.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2010-05-06
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- Open archived copy ↗ · 2026-04-18
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Dates the joint specification: 'The two cities currently driving this forward the most, San Francisco and Washington D.C., have come together to agree on and fully interoperate with a new Open311 GeoReport v2 specification.' Same post records that San Francisco 'moved their API from just being available for testing to being deployed as a live, in-production web service'. The v2 spec was frozen on 11 March 2011.
- Claims linked
San Francisco 311 — Open311 GeoReport v2 endpoint
- Stable source ID
src-ff790016e7e8dbf1- Publisher
- Name not classified · mobile311.sfgov.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The city's public Open311 GeoReport v2 endpoint. On 27 September 2026 it returned live service requests filed the previous day; the companion services.json listed service codes of type 'batch'.
- Claims linked
San Francisco 311 — Open311 API notes
- Stable source ID
src-8d58629383f3b699- Publisher
- Name not classified · mobile311.sfgov.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- Open archived copy ↗ · 2026-08-14
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The city's Open311 page, hosted by its app vendor Connected Bits: points developers to the Open311 specification, gives the services.json example endpoint, states that no jurisdiction_id is required and that XML and JSON are supported.
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
The San Francisco Standard — His complaint app is way better than 311. The city is about to kill it (26 May 2025)
- Stable source ID
src-e90e70d330bcf22e- Publisher
- Name not classified · sfstandard.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-05-26
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- Open archived copy ↗ · 2026-08-01
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Officials told the developer of Solve SF on 13 May 2025 that the Open311 API would be shut down on 12 July 2025; the city administrator's office said it 'would have to be fully rebuilt'. Solve SF, launched 29 January 2025, had filed 16,278 of the 336,500 requests made in 2025 to that date, and by its own dashboard — which 311 officials called accurate — 44% of graffiti requests near Valencia Street and 21% of illegal-parking reports in the Richmond.
NBC Bay Area — Solve SF app linked to city's 311 may shut down after 5 months (27 May 2025)
- Stable source ID
src-9c71538f9e3452c7- Publisher
- Name not classified · nbcbayarea.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-05-27
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- Open archived copy ↗ · 2025-06-16
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Independent confirmation of the city's stated reason: 'changes to the 311 service will make it unaffordable to staff and maintain the old API.'
- Claims linked
SF Public Works Commission — correspondence log, 2–15 May 2025
- Stable source ID
src-475b76a20f2ed51a- Publisher
- Name not classified · sfpublicworks.org
- Type / language
- pdf · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- Open archived copy ↗ · 2025-06-01
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The Public Works Commission's log of correspondence received 2–15 May 2025 records a letter from a member of the public dated 14 May 2025 with the subject '311 shutting down API'.
- Claims linked
DataSF — 311 Cases (vw6y-z8j6)
- Stable source ID
src-c52553964fb6f6bf- Publisher
- Name not classified · data.sf.gov
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The open dataset of SF311 cases created since 1 July 2008 with location information, updated nightly, under the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL 1.0). The impact figures group calendar-2025 rows on the dataset's source field, counted on 27 September 2026.
Office of the Controller, City Services Auditor — San Francisco 311: New Technology, Stronger Departmental Partnerships, and Robust Internal Controls Will Improve Customer Service (9 August 2018)
- Stable source ID
src-5ef1e32cf34dba77- Publisher
- Name not classified · sfcontroller.org
- Type / language
- pdf · language not classified
- Published
- 2018-08-09
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- Open archived copy ↗ · 2024-07-30
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The Controller's performance audit of 9 August 2018: SF311 should improve internal controls so that requests are accurately addressed and its key reports can be relied on; Call Center performance 'declined substantially from 2013 to 2015'. Seven recommendations.
- Claims linked
Hoodline — San Francisco 311 buried in nearly 800,000 complaints (12 January 2026)
- Stable source ID
src-5177b004b1066dd4- Publisher
- Name not classified · hoodline.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2026-01-12
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-09-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-09-27
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- Open archived copy ↗ · 2026-01-12
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
January 2026 local coverage: nearly 800,000 311 requests in 2025, with third-party tools including Solve SF cited as pushing up volume while City Hall debated limiting its API access. Its headline total is lower than the city's own dataset count.
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
Known limits of this file
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “SF311 and its Open311 Write API” — San Francisco, United States. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/sf-311/ (last verified 2026-09-27). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
