All of the readings for this week are in the red book. The blog question focuses on the "Fix My Street" case. Please answer the following question:
Fix My Street is an example of the integration of government data with a citizen based service or a citizen focused service by third party developers. What do you see as the future for this kind of online service?
With the government adopting from ideas from the community, this builds the community and the start to act together as one to make their community better by means of communication. The government will then know what the community wants, rather than just basing decisions on estimations of what is wanted by the citizens of New Zealand.
ReplyDeleteWith this, citizens will also feel more involved in the change being brought about and feel more included in the decision making of their surroundings. This brings about the future adoption of more online communication and involvement in change through the use of online services.
Better communication with customers (as in this case are the citizens of New Zealand) will intrigue more participation in the community and the government will change as per the community rather than estimation.
Fix My Street allowed citizens to voice or raise their opinions about what needs to be improved in what areas. Then the government is able to take action with the support of citizens on their side. This meets the three elements: ‘knowing our communities better; giving local people more power; making performance more visible’.
This, in future, will give more power to local people. With advancing technology, there may also be status reports, and full disclosure on budgets, time taken and skills and specialists involved in each project. So, in turn, rather than the government keeping all the information within their own files, citizens may be able to gain more knowledge through these such enhancements in the future. With the government acting as the organizers or leaders of projects that the citizens helped to come up with or point out. So that everyone is involved, there will also be minimal controversy brought about with the changes being brought about in the community.
p.s. - you should all check out my mate Michael's Mix and Mash entry - http://crappr.heroku.com - a public toilet finder for all Wellington City Council toilets. I'm working on Android and iPhone apps for it right now!
ReplyDeleteWow josh.. seems like its going well.
ReplyDeleteReal time information is definitely what the future is all about... then it'll lead to predicted future information.
i think maybe Fix My Street is just the first of a new idea being brought about... so like other things and looking at the model of disruptive technology last week, it's something of that sort.
Soon Fix My Street will be replaced by a more improved disruptive technology, in my opinion.
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ReplyDeleteThe government will definitely in my opinion start sharing more and more data because there seems to be no good reason not to. But as Josh said there may be problems occurring where the data has used to build the application quickly becomes obsolete.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the future of this kind of process will be run wholly by the Government or local councils. I think that it would be a much better option than involving a third party because it allows for transparency and will give people much more trust in the system. Plus the creators have much greater discretion on how the data is used. But the problem of course, is that if the system doesn’t work as intended the backlash will be directed at the creator. Which definitely wouldn’t be a good look.
But this kind of technology is definitely needed in NZ. It would let there be a huge amount of transparency on so many different processes. It also makes it far easier for citizens to get a say on issues important to them. I know that personally I would be far more likely to post on a website dedicated to issues with the Wellington Council parking enforcement, than bother sending a letter in that would probably never be seen again.
I believe this type of technology has a huge potential for the government. The technology ensures the stakeholders, the local public, will not face dissatisfaction for whatever change the government is planning to bring to the local community by encouraging public debates and citizen participation.
ReplyDeleteIn the future the technology would allow local councils to add their viewpoints so as to have a closer relationship with the local public as the council voices their opinions towards the decision while not denying the public’s opinion. Although the local councils cannot get their messages across to the users, the details and information provided by the council may be valuable and also would allow them to understand the community better while giving the local people greater power.
Fix My Street is a way for citizen to voice their opinions across to the government. It allows the local community groups to contribute to shape their areas according to their opinions and allow their presence to be felt in the change. I agree with Darshika on the point that the tool meets the three elements: “Knowing our communities better, giving local people more power, and making performances visible”.
Fix My Street is really a good example of the integration of government data with a citizen based service or a citizen focused service by third party developers. FMS provide an easier way for the public to voice the problem that happening around them and improve the efficiency of voicing local public concerns. Compared with the traditional way, the power of internet let people report the problem instead of going to the local council directly. People can just get on the FMS website, and input some code, and the problem will transform to the local council via e-mail. By outsource the project to the third party developers, government can reduce the cost and focus on providing more services with high quality.
ReplyDeleteHowever, some issues of the website like FMS are really needed to be taken into consideration: 1. the duplication of the content. The same problem may be post on FMS many times, which will cause the data redundancy and bring some trouble for council dealing with the unnecessary data. 2. The delayed update. Sometimes the problem still on the unfixed list even it has been fixed. The real time data is important to this kind of website. 3. The traditional social media. It is hard for the people to transfer from traditional media such as TV, newspapers, ads on the train. Besides, other same type websites may have some features that one can’t compatible.
I think the future of sites like this is dependent on the creators (government or third party) view of the value of information and their perception of the community they are interacting with. In the case Fixmystreet.com is free and provides a limited ability for community interaction. The problem I can see is that future services like this will be too interested in making a profit from the service for the information provided; this will reduce the community and in turn reduce the quality of the site.
ReplyDeleteThere will also be the issue of the creators unwillingness for long term interaction and moderation of the site, the amount of time and effort required from the site may be seen as too expensive versus the benefits gained from having the community. This would be different depending on of the site but overall if the site is actually intended to be a community forum then the ability for community interaction would need to be high.
I see both of these factors as limiting the future of citizen based services.
The ‘Fix My Street’ website illustrates how the government and local councils are adopting the ideas and concerns of the community. By allowing residents to become more involved and invested in their neighbourhood through ‘Fix My Street’ it acts as a building tool for communication to occur and relationships with others to strengthen.
ReplyDeleteIn the future ‘Fix My Street’ may give more opportunities and influence to voice their opinions to local councils. However, I do feel that inevitably the users will reach a wall/ceiling to this influence as control will become a priority for the governments or local councils – e.g. local websites will be heard more often than ‘Fix My Street’. It would be unwise to allow local residents to have more input into how communities can be improved and I would argue that results would be similar to those like last week regarding the New Zealand legislation Wiki that to me appeared to have no value for the future. In the reading it appears that the website becomes an entity of its own as its creators begin to see its users lose sight of the main objective/goal of the service.
In summary, I think that ‘Fix My Street’ is a clever media service but as many others prior, it will become ineffective within a few years. I think the main reason this has been ‘successful’ is because its users and community residents are seeing each individual issue/problem addressed and publically recognized as being an issue by like-minded people. In the end, it is all about communication – what the public want, and what the councils do/say in response – e.g. we have/have not fix the pot hole in Blake Street (as pointed out by Darshika - "making performance more visible"
Social network services have become an important part of modern culture. In the case FMS is the great way to keep in touch with others which make the communication be faster and easier between stakeholders, but this kind of e-Services still experiencing issues such as how confidential their information is. I think that the number of social webs like FMS will increase in future and they will offer more services because web is still young technology.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, FMS has great potential. The benefit of using online services for public concerns is a great way to voice public opinions. The system enables citizens to report, view or discuss local problems and track their resolution by the local government concerned.
ReplyDeleteIn the future I see FMS online service that encourages greater community involvement in problem reporting and resolution. This is an effective way to get citizens involved to input public services. The virtual community and the council build a stronger relationship between the two parties.
This method is a quick an easy process to go through, like Josh C said earlier about sending a letter and never hearing back on the outcome. FMS service gives public the opportunities to post new problems, older problems status, recently fixed and old fixed problems. This makes it easier for the public to track the progress of the work.
This will be highly beneficial for the local government as well as the public enabling the delivery truly citizen-centric to local public services. For this to take place I believe public awareness campaigns should be setup.
Now that we are provided with advanced technologies, anyone passing the roads which needs a repair can easily go online using their smart phones etc and post deals of what they have seen that needs a repair. This will be more responsive process. I think there are a number of opportunities available for both the council and the citizens in regards to the way they can utilise FMS service.
Reading all of your comments about FMS, there are many pros and cons that we can see.
ReplyDeleteOf course everyone is going to look at the whole idea differently, but overall, it engages the community rather than just leaving it up to the government.
For instance, if we see the government fixing a street, most of us think 'why the hell are they wasting money on this road for?!? it was perfectly fine!'
But, with FMS, the government acts upon the community feedback, allowing for support of national projects.
Also, with realtime information and feedback on it leading up to the actual 'actions' commencing, anyone can have a say. So, in turn, no one has the excuse of complaining afterwards unless the act taken is really in contrast to their input.
Just like facebook, FMS acting like a social network will be able to provide up to date information, while still keeping records of previous conversations/feedback and records.
I think it's a good change as everything is becoming more and more technology based, the government is also changing their processes and internal proceedings of projects with now including citizens nationwide at minimal cost.
Very good Josh, What a great idea
ReplyDeleteSites like FMS are an easy, fast and simple way for members of the community to report issues and place feedback, I think this is a great idea, but like what has already been said there is always going to people who lose sight of the pages purpose and misuse.
I think that in the future we will see more of these kinds of community online services.
These online services are great for getting real time feedback from the community.
The internet is becoming very user orientated with web 2.0 really dominating a lot of online content, sites like you tube and Facebook are great examples.
@Darshika - Agreed
ReplyDelete@Darkshika - Very good points!
ReplyDeleteIt should be really interesting to see if projects like FMS actually take off in NZ soon or if it's gonna take awhile.
@Shomiya - Hi on the point about building a stronger relationship between the council and the virtual community, as the performance of the local council is visible, wouldn't the relationship widen even further if FMS creates the impression of council failure?
ReplyDelete