Crowdsourcing the Department of Public Works 143
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.'"
Re:Heroin? (Score:4, Informative)
Alcohol regulation gets fucking stupid.
We have a (responsible!) liquor store chain in my town. They have a store that is ~1400ft (as the crow flies) from an elementary school. Never a record of the store ever selling to minors, and they've got a store policy of catching and reporting fake ID's to the police.
Last year, the idiot town council changed the limits on liquor licenses from 700ft to 1500 ft, and changed it from "shortest path" to "as the crow flies" measurement, then tried to get the store's liquor license retroactively revoked on the grounds that they didn't meet the new (illegally ex-post-facto) legal standard.
It's ridiculous. But then what do you expect when you live in a town dominated by "no drinking, no dancing, no fun, the-stick-up-our-ass-has-a-stick-up-its-ass" Southern Baptists?
In the UK... (Score:3, Informative)
We have a similar thing in the UK, called Fix My Street [fixmystreet.com]. I used it once. I got a form email after a couple of days, followed promptly by nothing at all. They finally got around to fixing the problem I reported after a few months, but never bothered to reply to say so. Zero human communication. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's all very well setting something like this up, but the government has to be committed to the project for it to work. Setting up a website is only the small part, getting them to actually follow up is another matter. It's all too easy for a politician to pay lip service to ideas like this, but fail to adequately support the effort after the headlines have been made.
Re:How is this news? Oh, its on the web!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Portland (Score:2, Informative)
Citizen Reports is a direct result of Mayor Adams and the City of Portland’s call for more open data and interactions with the citizens of Portland. Citizen Reports is used by citizens to report and request service calls to city assets and infrastructure, including issues with parks, pot holes, traffic lights, street lights, catch basins, and graffiti. Additional city assets and service request types will be added over time.
Using an iPhone, citizens can access this easy-to-use interface to the City of Portland’s issue reporting infrastructure. Citizens select the type of issue to report, take a photo (or upload an existing one), geo-locate the issue via GPS or interactive map, add comments, and send their report directly to the responsible bureau for resolution. Citizens can also view issues they have previously submitted and check the status or resolution of the issue.
Citizen Reports is a small but important step in allowing citizens to participate in expediting the City of Portland's awareness and resolution of various issues. Citizen Reports is available for free within the Apple App Store.
Re:Heroin? (Score:3, Informative)
> Alcohol makes people more violent. Heroin makes people very mellow.
Wrong, and wrong. In many cultures, alcohol that makes people mellow, and sometimes there's something else that makes them aggressive. In one peculiar culture, imported western alcohol consumed in cities made people aggressive and traditional alcohol consumed in villages made them mellow.
Learned effects, people. We know it from comparative anthropology, and we know it from large, double blind studies performed in the sixties and seventies: alcohol changes you the way you expect it to change you.
People use the supposed effects largely as excuses. Alcohol gives you the excuse to say what you want to say, or occasionally punch who you want to punch. Someone who beats his wife when drinking isn't exactly excused, but he's called a drunk. If he did it when cold sober he would be called a psychopath instead. Both alcohol and cannabis are useful excuses for your grades not being as good as they "could" be.
What about heroin? Heroin, the king of chemical excuses around here, gives a rather plausible explanation for your life being a mess. (If you've heard the life story of a couple of street addicts, you know there's usually more than enough explanations already, but it's more appealing to be a victim of a powerful chemical than just not coping with a messed-up life. )
Re:If left up the crowd (Score:3, Informative)
The crowd overwhelmingly seems to support drug dealers who sell to adults.
Especially pot... which should be legalized.
But also cocaine (which could be argued either way).
Probably not meth.
my point is that there are drug dealers and there are drug dealers. Depending on their target market (kids vs adults) and their product (pot, cocaine, heroin, hash, crystal meth, crank, crack). Your local drug dealer could be a dangerously crazy type or it could be someone's nice grandmother.
Cigarettes and alchohol are also drugs.. and they are legal.
Re:Sounds like a good system (Score:2, Informative)
I lived in two of those nice neighborhoods in Colorado Springs in 1998. At the time I was a Java developer for MCI working on their Local Care system. In one house I lived alone, and in the second house I had three hot goth girls as roommates. I'm 6'4" (190cm) tall, have long hair and tattoos, dress in all black w/ combat boots, ride a loud motorcycle, and at the time had a sports car with a loud audio system installed. On two separate occasions the police were dispatched to my house by anonymous tips from the neighbors about drug parties, the manufacture and sale of narcotics, prostitution and other lies. The truth was that I threatened their nice gated community by looking different. On one visit they sent a vice detective with two uniformed officers to ask if I would sign a waiver that would allow them to search my house. I politely declined.
Some neighborhoods have trash that needs to be cleaned up. Some people are just individuals. Anonymizing the reporting system opens it up for abuse and _does_ lend it towards spy-on-your-neighbor big brotherism. What if you see your neighbor smoking something from something that looks like a bong, but he's inside his house when you see him do it? What if you're naive and didn't realize that the "bong" was a vaporizer for asthma relief? I believe that people should be allowed to face their accusers and an online system that encourages reporting of neighborhood faults needs to have protection built in against false reporting. What if the graffiti is on my house, and I like it because I'm into urban art? Control over neighborhood issues isn't a wiki - it's wrong to expect that someone's mistake will be cleaned up by someone else. When one person's mistake is an uninformed retaliation against another person's innocent and legal behavior, the law and society tend to favor the one who made the knee-jerk reaction. Does this mean that more of society is uninformed and they're protecting their own? Or am I truly bad for the homeowner's association because I don't conform to their standard?