Crowdsourcing the Department of Public Works

blackbearnh writes "Usually, Gov 2.0 deals mainly with outward transparency of government to the citizens. But SeeClickFix is trying to drive data in the other direction, letting citizens report and track neighborhood problems as mundane as potholes, and as serious as drug dealers. In a recent interview, co-founder Jeff Blasius talked about how cities such as New Haven and Tucson are using SeeClickFix to involve their citizens in identifying and fixing problems with city infrastructure. 'We have thousands of potholes fixed across the country, thousands of pieces of graffiti repaired, streetlights turned on, catch basins cleared, all of that basic, broken-windows kind of stuff. We've seen neighborhood groups form based around issues reported on the site. We've seen people get new streetlights for their neighborhood, pedestrian improvements in many different cities, and all-terrain vehicles taken off of city streets. There was also one case of an arrest. The New Haven Police Department attributed initial reports on SeeClickFix to a sting operation that led to an arrest of two drug dealers selling heroin in front of a grammar school.'"

Comments

Re:Heroin?

[Hatta]

I'll just take this time to point out that I've never heard of anyone selling liquor in front of an elementary school. If you want to get heroin off the streets, put it in well regulated stores instead.

3rd party aggregation of complaints

[Anonymous Coward]

If you email or call the city, it's between you and the city.

If you use this site, it's among you, the city, and everyone else using the city. So whereas now the city would just ignore you cause they don't give a shit (like where I live), this might just provide sufficient public shame to get something accomplished.

I'm not naive enough to assume the magic of the intertubes will fix everything, but as ideas go, this isn't a bad one and has some potential as a responsiveness check on municipal government.

Re:3rd party aggregation of complaints

[alphax45]

Sad that people have to be publicly shamed into doing their job - but it does work!

Re:3rd party aggregation of complaints

[DragonWriter]

Sad that people have to be publicly shamed into doing their job - but it does work!

"Shame" or not, I don't think its surprising that people are more likely to do the job that they are being paid to do if their performance (or lack thereof) is more visible to the people that are paying them to do it.

Re:3rd party aggregation of complaints

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It isn't just shame. Convenience counts.

A call or email, even a polite one with grammar and everything, is largely unstructured information. A human has to interpret it, parse the actual data out of it, and pass it on to the right person. If they have to do that manually, they'll fuck up some percentage of the time, even if they actually care about what they are doing, and more often if they don't(y'know the game "Telephone"?)

If, on the other hand, through the use of web technologies(and, as time goes on, cell GPS and geolocated cameras and similar toys) you can make it much easier, less error prone, faster, and less drain on human effort(secretaries don't earn serious cash, but they aren't free) to do the right thing.

A lot of public works departments(along with their various private sector equivalents, telco/cable/electrical repair types) have been moving, at various speeds, towards fairly serious IT integrated response systems for some years. GIS, GPS, the works. The dispatch center has a big electronic map, with the locations of work crews and equipment on it(some equipment can even give updates about its status, condition, preventative service times, etc.) and incidents that need attention. They can then easily, and in some cases algorithmically, allocate the best available crews and hardware to the problems that crop up, according to type and severity.

For security/spoofing/spamming reasons, I suspect that they wouldn't want to give direct web facing access to such a system; but if you had a website that allowed cell users to trivially upload a picture/GPS fix/problem description, then crunched it into a format that could be pulled in to a GIS dispatch system, you would make efficient response much easier, and less subject to error.

It's basically the difference between proper SNMP monitoring and depending on having users call the IT office and say "the so and so is down!!!!". The latter isn't completely useless; but, for systems of any significant complexity, isn't nearly as efficient as one would like. The automated way takes some discipline and setup; but it is much more efficient.

Re:3rd party aggregation of complaints

[Miseph]

"the city might use some (possibly random) method of prioritizing repairs that is still doing something but might be less immediately useful to the population."

Random? You mean like "everybody hand me a random amount of money, and whoever hands me the most gets their problem fixed"? Or random like "I will randomly prioritize these issues according to how close I am with somebody directly affected by it"? Those seem to be the two most popular "random selection" methods I've seen.

Re:How is this news? Oh, its on the web!!!

[AnonymousClown]

After deciding that it was hopeless dealing with my neighbor, I went to call city hall. I left something like five different messages with the department that I presumed was responsible. At some point, while waiting on hold and getting different answers about what I could do,...

And what was touched on is that it's public

After that, make sure someone is receiving an alert. If you go to your neighborhood or city, you can click the "Who's Watching" tab and you can see if your mayor or your public works department is already receiving alerts. And if not, you can sign them up. The last step is just reporting issues.

NPR reported on this about a month ago.

It's pretty embarrassing to the bureaucrats when their incompetence is publicly visible.

The biggest problem that neighborhoods have ...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

... are probably their own local governments.

"Click here to have your corrupt mayor tarred and feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail."

. . . or . . .

"Click here to endorse a public works program, which nobody wants, because nobody needs . . . Monorail!"

Re:I don't care WHAT you call it.

[Killer Orca]

It's still government and it's still the source of everything that is wrong with this country.

I've heard tales of a mythical land called Somalia whee men are free to do as they please. Wait it is real, and it isn't a nice place to visit.

Re:Heroin?

[MarcQuadra]

The fact that it's so addictive and harmful are reasons to regulate.

I've lost a few friends and family to heroin. It's already here. The $80B we spend trying to keep it away only puts helpless addicts into contact with unscrupulous armed drug dealers.

If there were pharmacies that were secure like banks where addicts could go and buy limited amounts, we'd be much better off. Does it totally fix the problem? Absolutely not, but I'd like to know that my local junkie can peaceably go down to the store and buy his fix of clean, regulated regulated smack for the day and offset my taxes a bit.

Cigarettes are a -great- model, they're -maddeningly- addictive. I've collected wet butts off the ground, dried them in the toaster, and rolled them in wrapping paper to get my fix (long ago). I'll gladly pay $9 for a pack that costs under $1 to make if it keeps me sane. I want the same model for heroin addicts.

Also, it's not the -users- of drugs out there that tend to be violent (in my experience), it's the dealers and runners. Cut the dealers out of the loop and replace them with secure distributors and bank-type retail and you've just grown the economy -and- cut a huge amount of crime and lowered enforcement costs.

Re:I don't care WHAT you call it.

[Duradin]

It's like if there's an absence of a governmental power the most powerful will become the government...

And the powerful didn't get to be powerful by being Mr. Niceguy.