Fix It!

I came across this website called SeeClickFix that proposes a radical concept: allow people to document non-emergency problems in their community and have those problems reported to the authorities that can take care of them.

With the proliferation of camera-equipped and GPS-enabled smartphones, the concept is simple:
- download the SeeClickFix application for your smartphone
- when you see a problem, open the application, snap a picture and it is Geo-tagged and e-mailed to the appropriate city authority for the location where the picture was taken
- check the website and see how many complaints are received for the same problem and how soon it is fixed

What types of problems are people reporting?
It started with potholes in the streets - a problem we are very familiar with here in Pittsburgh after the snowplows try to clear the streets of snow - and has progressed to anything people find offensive: garbage, graffiti, damaged streetlights, etc.

This tool gives citizens a means of quickly highlighting what bothers them and it also allows city departments to rapidly get a feeling for what the citizens find most offensive. In other words it is a "win-win" situation in my mind: citizens get engaged and city planners focus their limited resources on what bothers citizens the most - what a concept!