The Problem with “Information Inflation” in Local Government

If it feels like your department is fielding more questions than ever, you’re not imagining it.

New York City’s non-emergency service requests, for example, climbed to over 3.4 million in 2024, up 7% from 2023, noting a dramatic rise after the COVID-19 pandemic.

No matter the city, the same pattern arises: more nuance, more urgency, and more messages.

This is what we’ve started calling information inflation: the “cost” of answering a question keeps going up. This isn’t the fault of your staff, but because the world residents are navigating is more complex, digital, and high-stakes than it ever used to be.

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What’s Driving Information Inflation (and Why It’s Not Slowing Down)

1) Housing pressure is turning routine questions into urgent ones

When housing is tight, every permit timeline, setback question, inspection requirement, or “Can I build this?” becomes emotionally loaded.

Indicators of this pressure include that:

• The U.S. housing market was still undersupplied by 3.7 million units (as of Q3 2024).
  
  
• Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reports 22.6 million renter households were cost-burdened in 2023 (spending 30%+ of income on housing), including 12.1 million severely burdened (50%+).
  

In other words, more residents are anxious causing timelines to matter that much mo re, and questions that used to be “nice to know” feeling like mission-critical.

2) Disasters and disruption create new questions overnight

Even if your team isn’t a “disaster department,” storms, floods, wildfires, and extreme weather ripple into permitting, inspections, and code questions.

Accordion to data from the NOAA:

• 27 billion-dollar U.S. weather/climate disasters occurred in 2024.
• The 2020–2024 average was 23 events/year, compared to a long-run 1980–2024 average of 9 events/year.
  
  

More disruption means more edge cases, ultimately rolling into your inbox.

3) Residents are “digital-first” now, and they expect answers fast

Whether or not government workflows can respond instantly, expectations are being trained by everything else people use.

Pew Research Center reports:

• 95% of U.S. adults use the internet
• 90% have a smartphone
• 80% subscribe to high-speed internet at home
• and about 70% of Americans expect government websites to provide information/services when they need it.

So when residents can’t quickly find your authoritative answer, they default to the fastest path that still feels human: email, phone, walk-ins.

4) Governments are answering more with fewer hands (and less slack)

Workforce strain makes information inflation feel even worse because there’s less buffer.

The National League of Cities notes that local government employment declined by more than 300,000 workers between March 2020 and March 2022. It was also noted that government staffing took longer than the private sector to recover to pre-pandemic levels.

So even if demand only rises a bit, it hits harder when processes rely on a few subject-matter experts and everyone else is already stretched thin.

5) Trust and privacy concerns are adding “one more question” to everything

Even when residents are comfortable using digital channels, they still want reassurance.

A Gartner survey found 61% of U.S. citizens rate secure data handling as extremely important for government digital services, while net trust in government’s handling of personal data was 41%.

When people don’t fully trust the system, they’ll ask for more follow-ups with full confirmation, context, and proof that they’re doing the right thing.

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‍What Your Team Can Do to Combat Repeat Questions‍

‍1) Answer the “next step,” not just the rule

Most follow-up emails happen because the first response answers what but not what now.

Examples:

• “Here’s the checklist you’ll need before you apply.”
• “Here’s where to confirm zoning in GIS.”
• “If you send us A + B + C, we can give you a yes/no faster.”
  

Every missing next step becomes another message.

2) Align internal interpretations before you publish anything

If three staff members explain the same policy three slightly different ways, residents sense uncertainty and push for more clarification.

One shared explanation (written once, approved once) reduces:

• resident back-and-forth
• internal staff debate
• training for new hires

3) Build “resilience” into your replies

The real goal is not just speed, it’s consistency when:

• someone’s out sick
• turnover hits
• a seasonal surge arrives
  

When every staff member has the same strong starting point, the entire department becomes harder to overwhelm.

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Where Acta Fits In

Information inflation is fundamentally a communication systems problem: the more repeat questions you get, the more your team needs reusable clarity.

Acta helps departments do that by:

• Keeping pre-approved templates ready to send for high-volume questions
  
  
• Making SOPs, policies, and “how we do this here” guidance searchable with the Acta Operations Manual
  
  
• Helping teams spot patterns in what residents ask most, so you can prioritize the answers that will reduce the most workload
  
  
• Working inside Outlook, so staff don’t have to change platforms to change outcomes

If you're curious to learn more about our products from our Smart Response System, an Outlook add-in that allows staff to send consistent information, to Ask Acta AI, a browser-embed software that conducts accurate parcel research instantly - feel free to respond to this email or click here to schedule quick demo!