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About 311

The head IT guy for NYC is taking questions about the city’s 311 system over at the Times’ City Room blog. Here are his first set of answers. Here he talks about unusual calls they receive:

For a few examples of those we can’t … well, we’ve received calls from people wondering who won “American Idol,” or what the daily lottery numbers were. We’ve had people ask us why pets can’t be claimed on income tax returns, how many planets there are, and whether we can provide various out-of-state ZIP codes. My personal favorite is the call we received by someone asking how to boil a chicken.