San Antonio's 311 System Can't Verify Its Own Performance Data
Summary
A performance audit from San Antonio's Office of the City Auditor found the data behind the city's 311 complaint system cannot be trusted: wrong deadlines loaded into the tracking software, closed animal-control complaints that never synced back as closed, and a reclassification queue where hundreds of requests sat unresolved for weeks. A separate test of who can access that system found current employees and departed staff alike holding access the city's own rules say should have been cut as long as 11.5 years earlier.
Deadlines that don't match what's in the system
Every service request 311 opens carries a deadline -- a service level agreement, or SLA -- that each receiving department sets for how fast it should be resolved. Auditors tested 208 of the 246 request types⧉ 311 used in January 2025, comparing the deadline programmed into the CRM tracking software against each department's own documented timeframe. Thirteen -- 6% -- had the wrong deadline loaded in. In one case, a request type the department's own rules say should take 3 hours was instead tracked in CRM with a 10-calendar-day deadline. Twenty-nine more types, 14%, had no SLA in the system's reference list at all, so auditors couldn't check them either way.
View data as table
| Matched the department's own SLA | 166 | 80% of the 208 request types tested |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong deadline loaded in CRM | 13 | 6% -- one type showed a 10-day deadline in CRM for a request the department's own listing says should take 3 hours |
| No SLA on file to check against | 29 | 14% -- not listed on CRM's SLA reference at all |
The consequence shows up downstream. 311 sends each city department a monthly aging report⧉ listing overdue service requests, and departments rely on it to know what still needs attention. Auditors reviewed 32,576 open requests as of January 2025 and found 3,369 -- 10% -- past their deadline, ranging from 3% at Development Services to 27% at Historic Preservation. But the report carries its own asterisk: because the SLA data feeding it is wrong or missing for a fifth of request types, the auditors wrote plainly that 'the reports produced from CRM are not reliable⧉.' The 10% figure is the best available read of the backlog -- not a confirmed one.
View data as table
| Total (all departments) | 10% (3,369 of 32,576) |
|---|---|
| Historic Preservation | 27% (3 of 11) |
| Animal Care Services | 21% (1,823 of 8,622) |
| Parks and Recreation | 17% (193 of 1,111) |
Cases marked closed that don't close
A separate test looked at whether backend department systems actually tell CRM when a case is done. Animal Care Services runs its own system, Chameleon, for stray-animal and bite complaints; when a case closes there, it's supposed to sync back to CRM as closed automatically. Auditors analyzed 8,622 requests Chameleon marked closed in January 2025 and found 85 -- 1% -- never synced back⧉, leaving CRM showing them as still open. A separate queue for requests that get misfiled to the wrong department fared worse on speed: of 9,512 requests sent for reclassification or reassignment between October 2024 and July 2025, 149 sat pending for between 7 and 79 days⧉ after they were supposedly closed out.
Access that outlived the job
The audit's sharpest finding concerns who can still get into 311's systems. Auditors reviewed user-access lists for Calabrio⧉ -- the system that records 311 calls -- and CRM as of May 2025. Three of 63 people with Calabrio access no longer needed it: they'd either left city employment or moved to a role that didn't require it. Four of 277 CRM users were in the same position. Auditors found this access should have been cut off between 2.5 and 11.5 years earlier⧉ than it was. 311 management had actually run its own access review in August 2024 -- and missed all four of the CRM cases. Calabrio, meanwhile, had no periodic access-review process at all.
The audit is careful to note what 311 gets right: call answer times, annual CSR training, and backup procedures for outages all passed testing cleanly, and the department answered 97.23% of the 740,852 calls it received in fiscal 2025⧉. The gaps auditors found sit specifically in the systems meant to verify the department's own performance and control who can see and change the data behind it -- not in the phone-answering operation citizens interact with directly.
The city's own fix-it clock has already run out
311 management agreed with every finding⧉ and filed a corrective-action plan, signed in mid-December 2025: correct the CRM access list and start reviewing it periodically by January 31, 2026; fix the wrong SLAs and formalize an annual SLA-accuracy review by March 31, 2026; build a standard procedure with the city's IT department to catch integration failures like the Chameleon gap by February 1, 2026; and clear the reclassification backlog by December 31, 2025. Every one of those target dates has now passed. The City Auditor's public reports archive does not yet show a published follow-up review confirming whether the fixes actually landed -- this piece describes the January 2026 findings and the department's own committed timeline, not a verified after-the-fact outcome.
- Auditors found 13 of 208 tested 311 service-request types (6%) had the wrong deadline loaded into the city's CRM tracking system, and 29 more (14%) had no deadline on file to check at all -- in one case a 3-hour request was tracked with a 10-day deadline.
- Of 32,576 open service requests reviewed as of January 2025, 3,369 (10%) were past deadline, ranging from 3% (Development Services) to 27% (Historic Preservation) -- but auditors flagged the underlying data as unreliable given the SLA errors above.
- 85 of 8,622 Animal Care Services cases closed in the department's own system (Chameleon) never synced back as closed in CRM; 149 of 9,512 requests sent for reclassification between October 2024 and July 2025 sat pending 7 to 79 days.
- Seven of 340 user accounts checked across two 311 systems (Calabrio and CRM) held access that should have been revoked -- in some cases as long as 11.5 years earlier -- including four CRM users a prior city access review in August 2024 itself failed to catch.
- 311 management agreed with all findings and set corrective-action deadlines between December 2025 and March 2026; all have now passed, with no public follow-up audit yet posted confirming completion.
This piece describes findings from a single performance audit by the City of San Antonio's independent Office of the City Auditor, covering the audit period October 2023 through May 2025 and released January 5, 2026. The audit found 311's core call-handling operations -- answer times, staff training, backup procedures -- passed testing without issue; the findings described here are specifically about data-integrity controls (SLA accuracy, system integration) and system-access controls, not service delivery to callers. The department's corrective-action plan committed to specific fixes by dates between December 31, 2025 and March 31, 2026; as of this writing no follow-up audit confirming completion has been published on the City Auditor's public reports index, so this piece makes no claim about whether those fixes were completed on schedule. All figures and quotations come directly from the audit report and the City Auditor's official Audit Reports index page, both hosted on the City of San Antonio's own domain.
Sources(2) ▾
- City of San Antonio, Office of the City Auditor, 311 Customer Service: Audit of 311 Operations (Project No. AU25-001) (2026-01-05) — The City Auditor's performance audit of San Antonio's 311 Customer Service Department, covering October 2023 through May 2025. Evidences the inaccurate/unverifiable SLA data loaded into the CRM system, the Chameleon-to-CRM integration gap, the reclassification/reassignment backlog, the CSR-coaching gap, the stale system-access findings for Calabrio and CRM, and the department's corrective-action plan with named responsible officials and target completion dates (Appendix C). Published directly on the City of San Antonio's own document-hosting domain (sanantonio.gov) and linked as the canonical report from the City Auditor's official Audit Reports index page. sanantonio.gov · original document
- City of San Antonio, Office of the City Auditor, Audit Reports -- Office of the City Auditor (2026-07-20) — The City Auditor's official index of published audit reports, confirming the 311 Operations audit's title, project number (AU25-01), issue date (January 5, 2026), and the canonical link to the PDF above -- used to verify the primary document is the issuer's own official copy rather than a third-party mirror. Also confirms the City Auditor's name, Buddy Vargas, CPA, CIA, CFE. sanantonio.gov · original document
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San Antonio's 311 Customer Service Department -- the call center and app that routes potholes, stray-animal reports and code complaints to the right city office -- is running on data its own city auditor says cannot be relied on⧉. A performance audit released January 5, 2026 found the deadlines loaded into the tracking system don't match the department's own rules for a meaningful share of complaint types, closed cases in one backend system that never synced back as closed, and a separate access review that missed city employees -- and departed ones -- who should have lost system access as long as 11.5 years earlier⧉.