Honolulu Hale today put out a cheery press release announcing that the public is “making good use” of new online and smartphone tools for things like camping permits, bus schedules and reporting problems for government to fix.

The city says use of the apps have “exploded,” and the 311 app has garnered more than 900 reports in the two months since its debut.

“We are finding that this low cost system enables us to quickly locate problems,” Mayor Peter Carlisle said in the release. “We are now looking at additional applications of this powerful tool that currently allows users to report issues like abandoned vehicles, broken street lights, or illegal dump sites.”

Good news, to be sure, but a little different than what we heard from one of the city’s technology leaders a couple weeks after the 311 rolled out. Here’s part of what Information Technology Deputy Director Forest Frizzell said in an interview when I asked him about use of the app about six weeks ago:

It’s being used, and unfortunately, and I’m kinda bummed out about it, it’s been abused. Our No. 1 complaint on the 311 site right now is abandoned vehicles, so I did a follow-up meeting with the staff that handled that. They’ve been out, busting their butts going out and checking out on all these vehicles that have been coming through the 311 site. Almost all of them are current, the safety check’s current, it’s in a legal parking spot. They think it’s parking disputes. We’re in a very congested city, and they’re using this app for that. So, it’s kind of frustrating, because it’s very difficult to get a government to release stuff like this.

Read more of that Frizzell interview here: Honolulu’s Tech Deputy: Government Can Help

(Photo by Flickr user from_ko)