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Over 10,000 Problems Fixed In Detroit Thanks To Cellphone App (motorcitymuckraker.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Six months ago, Detroit's city officials launched a smartphone app called "Improve Detroit." The idea was to give residents a way to easily inform city hall of problems that needed to be fixed. For example: potholes, abandoned vehicles, broken hydrants and traffic lights, water leaks, and more. Since that time, over 10,000 issues have been fixed thanks to reports from that app. "Residents have long complained about city hall ignoring litter and broken utilities. But the app has provided a more transparent and direct approach to fixing problems." Perhaps most significant is its effect on the water supply: running water has been shut off to almost a thousand abandoned structures, and over 500 water main breaks have been located with the app's help. Crowd-sourced city improvement — imagine if apps like this become ubiquitous.
Boston has had an app like this; it's called "Citizens Connect."
Essentially, it's a very half-assed ticketing system. You open a ticket, and that's it - you can't provide any further information, or challenge a request, or re-open it. There is only one action city worker can do - "close" the ticket. About the only thing they got right was not forcing people to select a category; a team of staffers handle that.
What people quickly discovered was that city workers would just close tickets, regardless of whether the work actually got done or not. So, what you saw increasingly were tickets that said "STOP CLOSING MY REQUESTS WITHOUT FIXING IT."
That said...it beats Cambridge, MA's system, which has horrendously poor geotagging and only accepts requests in a few limited, narrow issue categories.
I have three or four of these apps for the various cities I spend time in now. It's stupid. There is a national service set up, but cities don't like it because it provides a lot of reporting to the public. City workers don't like Joe Q Public seeing how long requests take to clear and stuff like that. Makes 'em look bad....
Please help metamoderate.
And by that I mean "Bankrupted by corrupt one-party machine politics, deindustrialization, and overly generous union pensions, and where the police can no longer afford to light up streetlights or to investigate any but the most serious crimes.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
We've had this in major cities in Denmark for years. Really nice: spots vandalism or a broken light. Fire up the app. Take a photo. The app logs GPS and gives option to move found position on map. Add optional comment and press send. Then the app keeps track of ticket status.
Other stuff we've had for years includes sms/app based mobile payment between individuals and stores. Sms/app based purchase of stamps when sending letters. Tickets for train/bus. Etc.
Slashdot.org has really become a blast from the past :-)