Communications of the ACM
The Open Source Problem Solvers Creating Government 2.0
With the SeeClickFix app, users can report quality-of-life concerns like potholes.
Credit: www.sfist.com
Technologically adept citizens are increasingly using their skills to address problems in government, says Personal Democracy Media founder Andrew Rasiej.
For example, Web designer Ben Berkowitz co-created SeeClickFix, a location-based Web platform that enables residents to document and report neighborhood concerns such as graffiti, potholes, and garbage collection. Meanwhile, Open311 is a partnership between several municipalities and programmers that enables people to file, discuss, and track non-emergency complaints. New York City's Big Apps project offers cash and other prizes to coders for developing the best new apps that use city-published data. Similarly, Anil Dash and Gina Trapani of Expert Labs have formed an open source Web app designed to help agencies better evaluate their mentions on various social networking sites.
Meanwhile, fellows at Jennifer Pahlka's nonprofit Code for America work with city managers to identify projects that can benefit from Web-based solutions. For example, they used Boston city data to build an app that lets parents see which school their child is zoned for based on a set of data they input. "If that had gone through normal government channels, it would have taken two years and cost $2 million," Pahlka says. "We did it for basically nothing in two months."
From Guardian (United Kingdom)
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