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:5, Interesting)
Alcohol's a cross between not-that-bad and impossible to regulate.
We seem to be doing a better job of it than heroin.
Heroin is pretty fucking toxic.
Heroin is actually quite non-toxic. If your breathing is supported, you can survive pretty much any level of an opiate. It's not toxic to the liver, or pretty much any other organ.
We're talking a chemical with no benefit, that makes you literally need it all the time to even stay on a normal level once you're hooked
But it's worth mentioning that with dependence comes tolerance. When an opiate addict is maintained on the dose they need, they can carry out an otherwise normal life. Dr. William Halsted, for instance, had a brilliant surgical career and co-founded Johns Hopkins while maintaining himself on morphine. That doesn't happen with alcoholics.
if you cut it off completely after a certain point, you die from withdrawal.
That is simply not true. Unless your health is already seriously compromised it is not possible to die from opiate withdrawal.
Heroin will do it way easy; and the natural course of exposure is to tend towards that addiction, strongly. It's also much easier to overdose.
It's pretty easy to avoid an overdose, if you know what dose you're taking. Problem is, black market heroin is un-measured. Someone who could drop into a pharmacy and pick up a premeasured dose of heroin would be very unlikely to die from overdose.
This is a different problem than liquor, just like carrying a small rocket launcher is a different problem than carrying a 6 bullet revolver.
It's different, but not altogether worse. Heroin is easier to get addicted to, but the addiction is not as bad. Alcohol makes people more violent. Heroin makes people very mellow. It's easier to overdose on heroin, but you don't see the same sort of chronic toxicity you do with alcohol. You can't objectively claim that one is worse than another.
Sounds like a good system (Score:5, Interesting)
The more civic functions that we are able to move online, the better. I live in Long Beach, CA and the city has a graffiti hotline. The one time I used it, the graffiti that I reported was cleaned up less than 24 hours later. The system involves having to leave a voice mail, and the recording time is way too short. It would be much easier to be able to upload digital pictures, or even click the relative location on a map and type in a short description. It would make dispatching the tickets easier too on the city's end.
I'm sure that there will be some who decry the big brother potential of the system. They will worry about nosey neighbors and the spectre of authoritarianism intruding into their lives. I wonder how many of those people actually live in neighborhoods that are right on the border between "nice" and "not so nice". In those neighborhoods, community activism and participation are key in reversing the slide toward the "not so nice" end of the spectrum. All it takes for a neighborhood to decay is for the residents to remain apathetic for long enough. Soon enough all of the "little" things start to add up.
Re:The biggest problem that neighborhoods have ... (Score:2, Interesting)
"Click here to have your corrupt mayor tarred and feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail."
IMHO, governments would improve greatly if citizens could vote to do that to representatives that fail to serve their constituent's interests. Just give people a choice of "Yay", "Nay", or abstain (i.e. for the non-voters), and ensure there's no way to delay the tarring/feathering or force a re-vote. I don't think we'd see too many more secrete copyright treaties, or politicians being bought by corporate interests.
Modern technology allows us to effectively live in a true democracy. Of course, this isn't desirable since the average person has no clue what the government ought to be doing, so a republic is still the better option. What we need now is a way to ensure that our representatives are actually acting on our behalf rather than their own. We can easily monitor most political actions, but we lack the ability to do anything about them.
Mixed Opinion (Score:1, Interesting)
As far as the potholes, graffiti, flooding and other similar reporting options go. Bravo, its a great way of bringing everyday problems to the attention of those who are responsible for fixing them, or at least showing that they exist and where. However.... I'm a little more dubious as to the morality of the other possible options, "Homeless Encampment?, Homeless Nuisance?" are some of the ones visible right on the example screenshots of the Citysourced.com website. I'm guessing "Drug Dealer, Meth Lab, Drug House, ect" are somewhere down the list. This for me brings up too many images of the East German Secret police and their encouragement of citizens to report on other citizens. In a time of (real) war I would have to wonder whether "dissident", "sympathizer" or "pacifist" would be on that list. All in all, I think such a system should focus on the physical problems of a city, and leave the criminal (or at least issues involving humans) ones to 911.
Re:In the UK... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's because you filled out a form 11-b, when you should have filled out an 11/b. It's your own fault for not taking more interest in your local government.
In Soviet Russia.. oh wait (Score:3, Interesting)
Locals repair roads!
http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2010/04/07/vladivostok-road-repair-flashmob/ [englishrussia.com]
Go, Russia!