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

[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: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: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.