City looks to monitor social media for 311.

Pittsburgh is planning to start monitoring social media and tie individual users to their comments.

The change would come as an expansion of the new Salesforce 311 system, which now has the ability to tag duplicate reports.

Heidi Norman, the city’s director of Innovation & Performance, told City Council Monday that the current 311 system is the first phase of the city’s “customer relationship management system.”

In the future, she said, “We are going to get into things like: what is a particular constituent saying about government in social media?”

The transition to the Salesforce system has been plagued with confusion and complaints.

Council Member Charland also responded to Norman’s plan: “I would rather us stick to picking up the trash and figure out how to do that and get that part right before we talk at all about expanding into any of these kind of troubling capabilities that we might have.”

The expansion of the system is not up for a vote by Pittsburgh City Council.