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Municipal Online Services Wishlist?

Posted by Cliff on from the city-services-on-the-web dept.

RaisinBread asks: "I may have an opportunity in the future to work for a decent-sized city. As such, I will likely work there for a short time to see how I fit before taking the job. After speaking to the City Manager about possibilities, he wondered what ideas I might have for potential projects. I have my own ideas, however I'd like to poll Slashdot on the following issue: What is on your wishlist for services you wish your own city would offer online? What existing services do you like or dislike?"

10 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Complete City Council Agendas by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At least 3 days before the meetings. Also committee agendas.

    Online forms for bad street and traffic lights, sprinklers, etc with followup tracking.

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  2. Fora (aka Forums) for neighborhood topics by Tiamat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Slashdot had a recent post about neighborhood/zip based resources, but this is another great place to house them. Neighbors could exchange ideas/strategies for accomplishing regional specific things like commuting paths, best places to get a cup-of-joe, etc.. It would also be nice to have blogging by gov't officials, to get a sense that the person is actually thinking about the job, and the issues they are employed to solve between public elections.

  3. Online Tax/Property Search by jaredmauch · · Score: 2, Interesting
    My local cities and townships have a nice resource for being able to view the online property and tax status information. This is all suff you could always view by going to the local offices, but it's available online both via the County City and if you live out by me, the Township.

    I'd ideally like to also have a list of all ongoing road construction projects, estimated completion dates, as well as current progress (updated daily/weekly).

  4. A few simple things in one place by andreMA · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Online reporting of defective streetlights and traffic control devices, with complaints appropriately routed.

    The pulic library system is likely not something you can directly influence, already having their own inter-library loan system, etc, but arrangements with them perhaps to crosslink with your resources.

  5. A few things... by shfted! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are many times a few things would be handy, especially for people new to town:

    • Community editable
      • Organisation listings (who's out there?)
      • Events calendar (what's there to do tonight?)
      • Directory of popular local sites (why should the webmaster do all the work...)
    • Hours of operation and contact info (including email contact) for all city services
    • Online payment of taxes and fees
    • A forum for debating local issues -- an easy way for council to keep a pulse on hot topics
    • Links to places offering employment opportunities
    • Climat information (hey, I'd want to know)
    • All bylaws (so you can look stuff up at any time)

    That's just stuff off the top of my head that I would like to see myself.

    --
    He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
  6. Traffic by krazed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How about an online service that pulls data from traffic sensors?

    The Puget Sound area has great traffic info online through WSDOT.

    If you're in the IT dept, you'll probably have to coordinate with other departments, but this is a really useful app.

  7. Re:A Map by Ed+Thomson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    here's a link to the map they provide Christchurch map It's the first result for a google search of "christchurch map" which makes it easy to find.

  8. Map Everything Online by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Milwaukee was one of the first cities to embrace GIS with any seriousness, and it shows. Their Map Milwaukee interface is quite practical, and quite cool:

    http://www.milwaukee.gov/gis

    The real question is, not what services can you provide over the web, but what services can you provide over the web /instead of in person/ that would make it cheaper. Applications, questions, answers, information lookup, and all that.

  9. online govt meetings by dan_bethe · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Salina, KS has all public city, county, and school board meetings televised on tv and streaming live and archived on the Internet. Most of the city and county ordinances and other documentation is online. We have our Public Access Mapping (GIS) database online. Almost all of our public nonprofits are online along with matching the public up with their corresponding resources and volunteer opportunities. Most of the big nonprofits have their own web sites with calendaring and everything else, far far too many to mention. Our whole public library catalog is online with renewals, reservations, and live shelf status.

    That's just the publicly funded stuff, not counting free classifieds and job listings, home schooling, community access television (publically created, not just publically viewed) etc. We've got more stuff online than most cities I've seen even of a much larger and more affluent scale around the US. My hat's off to any city that has any of this; they're doing more good than they know.

  10. Transit projects by Beek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Look into the transit system, there's probably some cool projects to do there. At my City, the transit system has an online application that will determine bus routes for you. Everytime I use it, I think "man, this would have been the coolest project to work on." And it's a really useful app too!

    If you want to see it, www.winnipegtransit.com, it's called "Navigo"