De La Rosa asks about WhatsApp channel roadmap
Chair recalls past testimony about extending 311 to WhatsApp. Morrisroe says it has not launched yet, remains on the roadmap, and challenges include estimating demand, staffing, and reconciling WhatsApp privacy terms with 311 policy.
So let's talk a little bit about future plans.
According to your testimony, on June 30th, 2022 and 2023, 311 will extend services to the WhatsApp messaging platform.
Further, on April 25, 2024, you confirmed those plans as it's still part of the roadmap for 311.
Did it happen?
It has not happened yet.
We have a WhatsApp account, but we have not moved it forward to make it a channel, make it publicly available.
So it's still on our roadmap and still work in progress.
What are some of the challenges there?
A couple of different challenges.
It's a new channel for us, and we don't have a good baseline on what kind of volume we would have.
Obviously, we size it based on what we can.
So we really have to figure out if we open that channel or when we open that channel up, what is going to be the demand, and then how do we staff up to meet that demand.
We don't want to be understaffing it, and especially if we're going to, even if we launch it on a pilot basis, we want to be able to make sure we can handle what comes in.
So that's one of the pieces.
And then working through the process with the WhatsApp tool itself is something that we're very
Cognizant of.
Yeah.
So how would the WhatsApp privacy policy and terms of agreements align with 311 privacy policies?
Do you know?
I can't answer the question, but I can tell you that that's one of the things that we're looking at as far as the roadmap.
How do we reconcile those two things?
Okay.