Bloomberg the executive was obsessive about catering to his customers, establishing 24-hour call lines, collecting data to help develop new products, and sending his executives out into the field to solicit feedback directly from clients. "Good companies listen to their customers, No.1," he says. "Then they try to satisfy their needs, No.2. But don't let [them] drive the internal decisions of the company."

As daunting as it may sound in a city never shy about complaining, Bloomberg decided New York needed its own 24-hour customer-service line. Yes, other cities had deployed 311 numbers, but never on such a grand scale. The benefit, beyond giving the public a new outlet to vent, would be making city government more efficient.

One month after being sworn in, Bloomberg proposed a 311 line that would allow New Yorkers to report everything from noise pollution to downed power lines. More important, 311 would give the mayor unprecedented access to what was on his constituents' minds. Bloomberg sees the weekly reports and gets a sense of the citizenry's angst — and whether problems are getting solved and how quickly.

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Since it launched in March, 2003, at a startup cost of $25 million, 311 has received 49 million calls. The service employs 370 round-the-clock call takers. And New York has done an impressive job of data-mining the calls and quickly responding, says Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis and now a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Something special is going on in New York," he says. As far as the mayor is concerned, the numbers tell the story. Emergency 911 traffic is down by 1 million calls since 311's inception, meaning first responders are being called to fewer non-emergencies. The Buildings Dept. uses 311 to streamline the permit process and the review of plans by inspectors. The average wait time for an appointment with a building inspector has dropped from 40 days to less than a week. Two years after 311 launched, inspections for excessive noise were up 94%; rodent exterminations, 36%.

Heather Schwartz, a 30-year-old graduate student, is a regular user of the 311 line and says she became a big fan last year when she called about graffiti in a northern Manhattan subway station. Within days, the walls were painted over. Each time the graffiti artists returned, the city would paint over their handiwork. Finally the vandals gave up. Now Schwartz calls 311 for everything from elevator inspections to trash in the streets. "I am thrilled with it," she says. "It professionalizes the city."

The more light, the better
Earlier this year, during a morning meeting with top staffers, Bloomberg noticed the large doors to the ornate conference room in City Hall. They were wooden. How could that be? Bloomberg thought he'd made City Hall "see-through." All meeting rooms had glass windows, so you could look inside. His desk and those of his staff were clustered in a room without walls to facilitate better and faster communication. By week's end the room had glass doors.

Bloomberg has tried to make the government and its agencies more open, too. In a task that previously fell to city budget directors, Bloomberg himself each year makes three budget presentations in the same day: One to city council, another for other elected officials, and one to the press. He uses easy-to-follow charts and tables, much like a CEO's Power Point presentation to analysts. His hope is that, by explaining the forces shaping the city's economy, a better understanding of his tax and spending priorities will emerge. The approach has not only helped him in budget negotiations with city council but also fostered a smoother relationship with civic and advocacy groups, says Mitchell Moss, an urban policy and planning professor at New York University.

What's more, citizens can get a closer look at their city government than ever before. The semiannual mayor's management report once exceeded 1,000 pages in three printed volumes. Today, the report — which reviews the delivery of city services — is 186 pages, available online, and includes many more features than before, including neighborhood data and five-year trends that allow New Yorkers to compare past and present. In addition, the city plans and budget, once convoluted fiscal documents with only summaries available online, are now fully accessible on the city's Web site. Before, a New Yorker could never see a specific agency's overhead costs — its pensions and legal claims, say. The costs were pooled as a single number. Now each agency breaks them out.

CONTINUED : Hire smart and delegate

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