What NEED does this meet?
Ensure our public spaces are clean, safe and inviting. Maintaining a public “bug tracker” to ensure graffiti, broken street lights and other issues are dealt with quickly. Gather objective data about trends in council performance.
What is the APPROACH?
Merge the concepts of writetothem and bugzilla to make reporting council issues a breeze. As well as a sending message capture photographs, date, time and location data (postcode, lat/long) to make life easier for the councils as well.
For fairness, users would have to positively and regularly assert that problems remained unresolved to keep the problem in the public domain and to ensure accurate performace stats. Give councils a link so they can anonymously ask the reporter if resolution was acceptable and ask them to sign off for statistical purposed.
Entries would be categorised so that different kinds and sizes of problems could be analysed separatley. e.g. you would imagine dead flowerbeds, road subsidence and grafitti would be resolved on totally different timescales.
What are the BENEFITS to people?
Gives people a central reporting process for all types of problem. The interface would be standard for the whole of the country keeping it simple for our increasingly mobile population.
Trends in council performance would be transparent. We would know objectively whether problems are resolved more quickly in rich areas, what the real relationship between council tax and service performace was, and which political parties gave the best value for money.
Problems would tend to get resolved quicker resulting in cleaner, safer, and more inviting communities.
Other proposals advocate a street-level approach to online communities. I’d imagine this idea would work best on a street level so it could be built into related services.
What is the COMPETITION?
I really wonder why upmystreet isn’t doing this already, oh yeah, they are big corporate now ;-)
Seriously, I’m not aware of any competition, but upmystreet could be a good commercial partner.
What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?
If you did allow photos of the issues then there would be a storage issue, but this is far from an essential component of the system. I do think photos would help councils prioritise more objectively, however.
Otherwise fairly cheap to run with mostly automatic processes. Would probably require a moderate coding effort upfront to repurpose and dumb down a bugtracking system.
Capture the location of each case using google maps.
Andrew Brown says:
Is this the sort of thing you meant?
Lewisham has been running this site for just over a year now and it works very well.
Full disclosure - I’m about to start working with the company behind the technology.
written on May 21st, 2006will perrin says:
i do a lot of this sort of thing as a volunteer notifying local environment problems to my council
see http://www.islington.gov.uk/Environment/EyesForIslington/
i generally do a walk of an area make a list using pen and paper as i walk and then send a compliation email to the contact centre of the problems i round up with photos where they help - that seems to be the most time efficient way that works for them too.
there is somethign in this proposal but i would caveat against techno determinism. indeed is technology part of the answer? can you imagine waving an expensive phone around in an area with real ’social problems’ to report somethign from the spot? or pausing in the rain in january to type something in on a laptop? isn’t it easer to telephone the council call centre?
if i had a magic device that coudl send a picture and very precisely record my location (far far more accurately than google maps or most GPS - eg third bulkhead light on the left is broken at the bottom of perth tower) sending this information and my signature to the site then that would be nice.
part of the answer would be for the council to make its street problems databse public so it could be mashed into google maps and seen by all.
cheers
w
written on May 21st, 2006Simon Gibbs says:
I sounds like you are very keen on helping identify these issues and get support from your particular council. This system would help encourage people who generally don’t get involved by lowering the barriers to participation.
I think for many kinds of problem Google Maps is perfectly adequate in terms of accuracy. To give a local example, reporting a pot hole outside 10 The Pavement, Clapham and clicking a map to indicate roughly where I mean gives a very immediate and accuate impression of where that pot hole might be.
I really don’t see photography as a very central part of the system but I imagine it would help councils to locate issues to within the last few feet and help them prioritise issues.
As for special devices, I think a Java application to capture photographs on from camera phones and plug into Cell based location services is well within the realms of possibity for open sourcerers. A well documented and stable CGI script would be enough effort on the part of MySociety to ensure such tools could interoperate. I think that would really help to lower the barriers to participation.
written on May 21st, 2006Simon Gibbs says:
Perrin
There is also a social effect.
Now, very often, I see people respond to moaning by recommending writetothem.com in response to otherwise unproductive compaining.The creation of this service could spawn a whole new phenomenon of recommending the niggles database. You could even turn it into a verb as in “If it bothers you that much, nigglebase it!”
Simon
written on May 21st, 2006will perrin says:
have had a little play with lovelewisham which is very good but demonstrates the need to integrate with the council concerned for them to post to it and include it in their workflow. it woudl be good to see a reminder/chaser function like the well engineered one in writetothem.
the need to download an app is an odd one and a huge adoption barrier for most mobile phone users amongst the general public (as opposed to council staffers) - why can’t you just mms or email a pic in ? the mobile companies research suggest public very conservative with what they do with their phones (see 3G and indeed MMS itself)
my local experience suggests that precise location is important otherwise work crews miss things and, as lewisham shows photos are a godsend to the contact centre (just ask them)
cheers
w
written on May 26th, 2006Nigel Tyrell says:
I work for Lewisham Council and I’m on the receiving-end of all these images sent in by residents. We generally don’t have much problem tying up the images to the problems. It has helped us cut down the casework, the time-wasting letter writing and helps us focus on putting things right. The requirement to download software has been a bit of an obstacle for residents, but they can post images from their desktop machines, and our developer is about to integrate MMS. We’re about to add GPS capability to the devices we use and the Police have agreed to use MediaKlik (the software behind Love Lewisham)within their Safer Neighbourhood Teams. Hope this helps.
Nigel
written on May 26th, 2006David says:
The issue of identification can be assisted by councils and utilities. Aboveground utility poles usually have identifying labels. I’ve just gone out and counted 3 sets of numbers on a wooden utility pole, and two sets of numbers on each of four lamp posts. Utilities and/or councils should have records of these, which, along with street and address numbers, should provide a ready source of identification.
The issue would be getting the respective organisation to make those identifiers public, teaching people where to look for identifiers, and continuing to add tags to new fixtures.
Overall, a scheme like this sounds great, and I’m glad to hear that it works in Lewisham, but I suspect that having a motivated and reasonably-well budgeted Department is critical to any success. I know - from personally haranguing the local Parks manager and the local Councillor - that officials are aware of things that need doing, but they are hamstrung by budgets, timetables, and competing demands. So a tool like this would be truly effective if it both monitored priorities and helped set them. Is there a practical way of doing that?
written on May 30th, 2006Simon Gibbs says:
“a tool like this would be truly effective if it both monitored priorities and helped set them. Is there a practical way of doing that?”
When I mentioned merging the concepts of writetothem and bugzilla I was speaking in a very abstract way, but it might be that this is more appropriate than I first imagined. Using the writetothem approach is essential because, while securing positive opt-in from Councils will be time consuming, bullying them with thousands of well structured pre-validated issue reports via their normal email contact addresses will leave them very little scope for saying no.
The previous commenter advocated the setting of priorities using this software. My first thought was that a written description of the problem, lat/long pair and an optional photo would be enough to help the call centre prioritise. Will Perrin seems to agree with that assumption. On the other hand David suspects that capturing identifying markers is key, I’m not sure I agree, but the point is logical.
My thought today is that with Google Maps integration and some simple form fields, the location, description, issue category, and identifing markers can all be captured and prevalidated easily. This would check that, say, a report about a broken light bulb requires a numeric lamp post identifier, and that the Google Maps derived lat/long pair actually resides within the selected council. The final piece is capturing the degree of demand for the resolution of each issue but this is, as I recall, an existing feature of Bugzilla.
My point is that *literally* providing a new data capture interface and customising the fields displayed by bugzilla - combined with the existing features of writetothem - might literally solve all of the problems identified in my proposal and in the comments. I won’t be surprised if extensive coding is still required but from my non-expert point of view writetothem+bugzilla+google maps looks pretty good.
written on May 30th, 2006will perrin says:
this is getting there
some good and bad points - to challenge further
the progress chasing element of WtT woudl be very welcome - it is frustrating to consign something to the council contact centre and never see it again - one or two councils do this sort of order tracking publicly already
the more you seek to pigeon hole people’s volunteer efforts the less likley they are to comply/bother. so one has to be very cautious on form fields from the usability (in the practicial sense) point of view.
lat long pair ???? in a contact centre! are you kidding ?
also try using google maps in dense social housing areas they are miles out, often a ‘here be monsters’ void. try ‘bingfield street london n1′ and zoom right in. the blank area to the north is the vast bemerton estate housing thousands of people where i do a lot of environmental work (the guardian called it a ’stalinist high rise gulag’) , just blank….. ‘cheviot street’ google has found next door doesn’t even exist etc etc.
numeric identifiers are not as helpful as you think i am afraid it is rare to find a numbering scheme that is up to date or a database that say a utility company is willing to share with anyone else. even within councils. when they work they are handy but i reported 50 (fifty) broken lights (owned by the council) the other day giving numbers of the lamp poles and was asked to give the location of the poles too because they couldn’t use the database……..
cheers
william
written on June 1st, 2006Simon Gibbs says:
Just to be totally clear on what’s being proposed. I think that creating a chasing function and pointing it a call centre that hasn’t opted in would be very rude indeed. I’m not sure whether we disagree on that. Nevertheless, developing statistics on the lack of response has independant value.
Users are still able to send follow up messages of their own. MySociety could even facilitate that, yeilding yet more handy stats. I just don’t think this should be automatic.
I had imagined Lat/long pairs would be presented as a clickable Google maps link in the emails. I’m also aware that there are algorithms for converting lat/long into an OS grid reference so that the council could use any OS map they liked. By allowing users to enter OS refs manually we’d overcome the problems with google maps for both user groups while still making it easy for those not consigned to the gulags.
It’s a shame that the disadvantaged are further put upon by the quality of the data, but if neither google nor open street map have data on the estates then there is no way to make it easy for those residents without someone physically going to map those places properly.
I agree with you on keeping things open in order to encourage participation. I’m not convinced on the inventory numbers thing, many people won’t think to take those down especially if there is more than one number etc. It wouldn’t be hard to support an optional field though.
To sum up, my preference would be that category, location reference and a set of address fields would be all the structured data. Validation would *not* require the whole address. Unstructured data would be just the message describing the problem and an optional photo. Location references could be captured flexibly using gogle maps or manual OS grid entry. A write to them style wizard identifies the council, item category directs the message to the council department.
The date and users email would be captured for the chasing emails and abuse prevention. The follow up would regularly ask the user to confirm the problem remains unresolved so that the case remains in the public domain.
There would need to be privacy options for both message and photo. There is then the need for registered users to browse and vote for “bugs” to help set priorities.
I think we’ve moved to quite a precise spec there. Thoughts?
Simon
written on June 1st, 2006Francis Irving says:
This site can also help people fix issues themselves, or escalate them appropriately. For example, give a link to make a PledgeBank pledge to do the weeding on the street if 10 other people will help. Or, send a mail a few weeks later to ask the initial reporter if the issue has been fixed yet - if not, give them a link to write to their councillor (or the correct department in BT, for, say, a broken phonebox).
written on June 13th, 2006Simon Gibbs says:
Additional website reference: http://local.direct.gov.uk/mycouncil/
This is very close, but not it’s not openly logged and the disjoint between national site and local site means you have to do everything twice.
Could be much better.
written on June 23rd, 2006will perrin says:
ok. stimulated by this discussion i have had a go at walking some of these concepts through as a worked example in my neighbourhood. the site at the url now has plenty of content
http://northkingscross.typepad.co.uk/my_weblog/
i am getting supportive reviews from my neighbours. mostly they like the fact that someone cares and can be seen to be doing something about the local environment. i am constantly reminded how few people at grass roots level use the internet in their private as opposed to work lives (a lot of people who care about this local environment stuff are over 50) and are not in tune with commenting or handling online stuff other than email.
my use of video caused one correspondent to turn the sound on on her computer for the first time ever.
my challenge as ever is working this into the council workflow. i still find them weak at dealing with emails and am about to try to train them to understand links to the site.
i chair for the council a local environmental taskgroup so i have a platform.
ALL views and comments welcome
cheers william
written on July 25th, 2006