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A comment on More than 10k problems fixed through 'Improve Detroit' app.

Re:More than 10k problems fixed through 'Improve Detroit' app by Animats on Friday October 09, 2015 @02:22PM (#10362266)
New York pioneered this with their 311 phone service. That was originally set up to get minor problems off of 911, and ended up being the main way citizens get the city to do something.

With a mobile phone, you can have pictures and geolocation, which helps. It's a good way to report health and safety violations, because you get pictures.

The real question is, do you get a ticket number you can track? Any support service where you can't track your requests is more cosmetic than useful.

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Re:More than 10k problems fixed through 'Improve Detroit' app by jeffwass on Friday October 09, 2015 @02:46PM (#10362424)
The 311 phone service was actually pioneered by Baltimore, not NYC, starting back in 1996.
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Re:More than 10k problems fixed through 'Improve Detroit' app by bonyt on Friday October 09, 2015 @03:58PM (#10362893)
Well, NYC has the first 311 app[1] that I'm aware of, so that's pretty cool.

1: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nyc-311/id324897619?mt=8

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Re:More than 10k problems fixed through 'Improve Detroit' app by benberkowitz on Friday October 09, 2015 @08:43PM (#10364002)
The app that Detroit was built on, SeeClickFix, came years before the NYC app and has the added benefit of displaying all other existing open issues. Detroit and SeeClickFix also support the Federal Open Data Standard, Open311 which is groundbreaking in itself.
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Re:More than 10k problems fixed through 'Improve Detroit' app by iwantagrinder on Friday October 09, 2015 @05:45PM (#10363453)
Yes there is tracking for each item submitted that the citizen can follow. I think this is the best part of the entire app to be honest, allowing a resident of Detroit to see in real time that the problems they've pointed out have been acknowledged and are actively being worked on are huge in this city.
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Re:More than 10k problems fixed through 'Improve Detroit' app by rmason on Friday October 09, 2015 @06:08PM (#10363540)
With the data being open for the first time it makes everyone in city government accountable. If the wait time goes up to fix a problem it rises in the hierarchy eventually reaching the mayor. Before stuff got buried and now that is virtually impossible.
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