International use of FixMyStreet

We’re just beginning a new project here at mySociety to discover what steps we should be taking to make it easier for people to set up a site like FixMyStreet for their own country or city.

We’ve already put a lot of work into making the code base for the FixMyStreet platform generic and country-neutral, but we’d like to make the process of setting up such a site easier than it is at present.

The first step in this project is going to be contacting as many people across the world as we can who have thought about trying to set up their own version of FixMyStreet, or who’ve actually tried.

We’ll be talking to people ranging from those who have active, running sites, to those who never got past the stage of thinking it might be a nice idea.  We want to find out what things presented particular difficulties, and which of the next steps we’re considering would make the greatest difference to international adoption of FixMyStreet.

Some of the things we’re interested in, for example, include:

  • Would you be interested in a hosted version of FixMyStreet, or do you prefer to set up a version locally?
  • How difficult did you find the process of finding administrative boundaries for your country?  Are the boundaries in OpenStreetMap good enough for your use?  As a last resort, would you want to draw the boundaries manually?
  • Would you be interested in an automated setup procedure which deploys a new server for your locality and then just requires web-based setup?

If you have any views on this, please get in touch with Mark Longair and Tony Bowden.