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This is really the dawn of Mobile Apps. It's been mostly consumer focused so far but the next big opportunities are in Enterprise (particularly Logistics and Business Intelligence) and these "civics" type projects are very interesting as well from a cost saving opportunity point of view.
The city is releasing a API for developers to use and our insights phase is open now powered by uservoice: http://insights.appsfordemocracy.org.
At the end of the day its just another communication channel albeit a very fast growing one !
There's an obvious ROI behind this. Any service provider should see this as an early warning opportunity to fix/remedy whatever situation (e.g. Amex) before it costs more, is more difficult to manage, or lowers their reputation.
I could see that adding in a twitter feed would make this even more effective as the issues become more public.
I think mobility and immediacy is key to getting these services to really work well. People will make reports on the spot but are very unlikely to wait until they get to a computer to make a report. I think as more and more people have smart phones these services will become a big factor in neighbourhood engagement.
geographic areas have rss feeds, etc to enable aggregation of this local data in the way you envisage. However, their iPhone app is the closest I've seen to the mobile submission model (althought the site is phone friendly.
It's a non-profit initiative run by the wonderful mysociety.org; the code framework is open source, I believe.
Along with the BBC, MySociety makes me proud to be a Brit!
But on the other end other end of the spectrum, the Chicago commuter system Metra just announced it would start accepting credit cards for train fares. Wow!?!?!
http://www.lovelewisham.org/Public/Images.aspx
r.
PEG
Private data sits stuffed inside a data center or company waiting for the owner to make sense of it, but public data is open for anyone to make sense from (and ultimately, profit from); the owner becomes a custodian, a massively different relationship.
I thought it was an excellent use of Twitter to reach out to the market and a great example of a company being "human".
i guess i should be grateful
The participated in our business plan competition with an interesting open source business, and finnished in the top-10.
Last autumn we (a bunch of software oriented cyclists) got inspired about similar simple idea of Open Feedback, that you well explained. We started developing a pilot project for the cyclists in Helsinki.
The municipality loved the idea and decided to pay for us so that we build a demonstration platform where the officers of city planning and construction departments could easily follow the discussion and give "official" responses.
In addition to the fact that anyone can see the given feedback and official responses we build a open API to the system so that anyone can build their own interfaces to the system and do all kind of visualizations and pothole mashups. What makes Twitter so nice is the open API that they provide!
PS: The amount of phonecalls to 311 must be crazy! Even in a small city like Helsinki the construction department alone gets 300 000 phonecalls in a year and the phone number is not at all easy to remember or find.
-Antti "Jogi" Poikola
Please see http://www.seeclickfix.com for its incarnation.
On SeeClickFix Anyone can document non-emergency issues and report them to those accountable for the public space.
You can add photos and video and click that you "want something fixed too" to raise the "clickets" rank and prioritize its importance. You can also create watch areas for those accountable to the public space so that they receive alerts on the issues. Document enough issues publicly in NYC and maybe Mr Bloomberg will want to integrate SeeClickFix as a community friendly front end for getting things fixed.
Twitter for SeeClickFix? Great idea. If you'll use it, we'll build it.
If you want to embed the seeclickfix reporting widget in your site: http://www.seeclickfix.com/widget.
If you want to reach out to us: team@seeclickfix.com
Apologies for the blatent spam but your post was so aligned with SeeClickFix it felt necessary.
Check out this article on SeeClickFix from yesterday's Hartford Courant: http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-see-click-...
scf is really catching on in many other cities, not so much so yet in new york, though i am hoping it will soon!!!
http://thecityfix.com/see-click-fix-repeat/ has a good summary of the site & where it has been succeeding.
As usual you are all way ahead of me on this stuff
The only thing I notice is that twitterific's map location tends to be pretty off. Suggestions for a better twitter app. for us to recommend with photo and one click googlemaps link?
Stay Posted for SeeTweetFix!
If anyone has an email for them, please post.
If you want to beat me to it: http://www.seeclickfix.com/fixers
This is how data is sent to city hall (or anyone you choose) when a clicket is reported on SeeClickFix.
One thing we did not anticipate when we allowed anyone on the site to be a "Fixer" and receive alerts from watch areas was that citizens might go out and do the fixing. Since the site was created we have seen citizens removing graffiti, purchasing pedestrian in-road signs for their street, doing litter pick-ups and even removing an abandoned boat and ski-do from a park before the city's park's department could get to it. What you are proposing goes beyond Gov 2.0 it's Community 2.0.
Your idea is reality:
You can tweet @seeclickfix with map link location issue description and photo optional.
Here's the instructions: http://www.seeclickfix.com/simple_pages/18
Thanks again for this. We've been having some fun tweeting issues to our local officials.
I think if the city of New York or Chicago(where I am) supported a service where members of the community could send information maybe the they would hear the people more.
http://spotd.me
For what it's worth it's my belief that Twitter's (and other social media's tools/properties/etc) greatest contribution is going to be to keep large organizations honest and realign them with their customer bases.
It's never been easier to unite with others who are as disgruntled with you. The flip side of that coin and the great news for telcos and other massive organizations is it's never been easier to be in touch with so many customers at once....to hear what they're saying (research) and easily respond to them (low cost).
These are powerful forces; it's really really exciting to see the "vendor/client" alignment being restored.
Google map complaints
The Geuzenveld local council has created a Google map that local citizens can put
photos and location information on for a complaint about a pothole, garbage
problems etc. The system makes the problem visible to the council but also to the
whole area. An example of Mashups leading to more transparent government
processes.
look at http://springwise.com/government/mmsing_local_g...
As ever, data is king - and any such processes (such as discussed) which are automated, data-centric and in the public domain should/could be an improvement. However, there needs to be (and i hate to use such terms) clear KPIs/SLAs in place, along with ownership. Similarly, people need to learn to express themselves and use such services, believing they will deliver results. A lot of education is required but better to start sooner rather than later, for sure!
Around our village the roads are in the usual post-winter utterly dire condition with pot holes aplenty, unattended to for months, not just weeks - friends have suffered car damage and won't even complain to the authorities to seek the compensation they are rightly due (because they are so cynical of 'the system') as a result of the local government's neglect.
PS, i can't see this replacing a good old French protest, however ... ;-)
They should accept info from the open web too
They also announced toronto.ca/open where they'll publish real time feeds and public data,- but I'm not sure if they'll accept open participation, as that may be the place to do. I'm copying and will re-tweet to @mayormiller who is on Twitter.
http://www.igovernment.in/site/Microsoft-unveil...
I'll do that
Pittsburgh released its mobile 311 app (iBurgh) in August 2009, and iBurgh has seen some 7000 downloads since its release. iBurgh is actually integrated into the City's 311 IT system so that every incident report filed through your cellphone is directly seen by the City and attended to. iBurgh is moving to other cities within the US and abroad. iBurgh aims to empower people with a two-way (so that the City is actually listening) channel into their local governments.
More on iBurgh at http://www.facebook.com/cityZenMobile and on twitter (@cityZenMobile).