Brainstorm / Visualization / Analysis / Data Usage Breakout Session

Future-looking discussion of advanced applications for 311 services. The assumption is that the data (including near-realtime data) is available from the 311 system.

Summary:

  1. Digg style prioritization service, reputation layer optional
  2. blame.us - who’s responsible, accountable - chain of blame for problems - and who can fix this?
  3. Public SR history - surfacing history of SR (and the related entities)
  4. Noisescore - realtime reporting of decibel levels
  5. Open Geo Stack - for the city (SaaS)
  6. Activity Streams - social and firehose
  7. Public Sidebar/ShiftSpace/OpenLayers - map layer
  8. Heart.us - neighborhoods competing to care the most about the neighborhoods
  9. .org+.gov matching system
  10. Hyperlocal dashboard - visualization of everything going on in a several block area
  11. 311 for engagement - opt-in for hearing about city announcements etc when you contact
  12. Elected officials visualization

More Notes: Assume: bidirectional comm/lifecycle tracking for SRs

Weighting/reputation for prioritization of requests

  • intelligent triaging of dupes; additional permissions based on karma/sincerity
  • full history tracking

lobb.ly, blame.us

  • reports - information of agency in charge, elected representatives, etc. etc.
  • where to cast blame? who is responsible? more importantly, who can *fix* this

Also, public history? ex.: perpetual pothole on the street getting local community to petition service request vs capital project - can 311 help w/ strategic/political decision making (bigger picture)? by making it available to the public open up requests, a more informed public bicycle crash report - case history?

using 311 reports to publicize - state issues

  • building political will across jurisdictional boundaries
  • sunlighting - seeclickfix examples: CT traintracks

NYC 311 - Analytics

  • internal BI system - access to anyone in govt who asks
  • star schema - 311 middle - points - building inspection, sewage maintenance
  • sensitive data - usually not?
  • some of the most useful data for public is the least sensitive
  • inspector reporting conditions on the street (telnav input)
  • on nyc.gov, but data feeds not available

analytics/visualization if you have the data, being able to slice/query/visualize:

  • types of reports, reporters, open requests
  • time to resolution, accounting by reporting channel, geography, socio-economic lines etc
  • overlaying requests to funding
  • view trends over time

City run, publicly available opengeo platform

  • annotations, histories ACLs (anecdote)
  • privately developed by nyu/columbia urban studies
  • deemed classified information post 9/11 (heights etc compiled from public data)
  • citymap - security, privacy levels

challenges:

  • not enough resources at the state level to create a unified standard
  • counties doing their own stuff based on their own expertise (HAVA compliance)

Timeliness is an issue - is the data propagating? is the entry better (the iPhone app being slowere than the old text only version)

surfacing public activity streams

  • PuSH - firehose - stream not dumps
  • social - social activity stream (opting in)
  • logging in link FB? is that identity - per item basis
  • PuSH + Salmon - private conversations back up
  • achievements, announcements: pothole fixed thanks to @a @b @c!

heart.us

  • 311 as proxy for how much people care about a neighborhood
  • scoring/game dynamics
  • prompts behavior (simple numbers, see if it helps or make things worse – unfortunately long term effects)
  • aligning social incentives, stats, engagement
  • 311 as strategy game, online game
  • make it fun?

Civic Sidebar Wikipedia

  • Google Sidebar - won’t or can’t respond to.
  • Map Layers - shiftspace

passive sensing

  • dash style - can there be problems reported passively using mobile sensors