Gov 2.0
Crowdsource Your Government
Jan 19th
By: Jason Kiesel
Governments are striving to accomplish more with fewer resources. Additionally, citizens are looking for governments to embrace the gov 2.0 movement, to become more transparent with allocated resources, and to increase communication and feedback. It is a lofty goal, but one that we feel that will increase the effectiveness of government, while also improving citizens’ experience. More >
CitySourced wins GovFresh 2011 Awards
Dec 21st
GovFresh recently completed its 2011 GovFresh Awards and CitySourced won Best Civic Start-up and tied for App of the Year. The awards showcase all of the city and local leadership and great civic technology work that’s been developed throughout the year. The GFAs strive to highlight the best and brightest, help better connect citizens with government, provide city and local governments better visibility to into best practices and emerging technology, and create a general conversation around how government and citizens can make government great.
More >
CitySourced Reporting Is Now Live!
Dec 28th
We at CitySourced are constant looking to improve our product offerings, and we’re happy to announce today that we’re going live with a new suite of reporting tools geared exclusively to our customers. We’ve been collecting data with our smartphone applications (available on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7) for over a year now, and it’s been starting to pile up. Now our customers can make use of this data and gain valuable insights into their workflow. With the new reporting application, our customers can now see:
- Total Reports by Date (Annual, Quarter, Month, Day)
- Total Reports by Report Type (Pothole, Graffiti, Street Light, etc.)
- Total Reports by Device Type (iPhone, Android, WP7, etc.)
- Total Reports by Device OS (iPhone 3.0, 3.1.2, Android 2.0, etc.)
- Total Reports by Status Type (Submitted, Received, Closed, etc.)
- Average Time to Close a Report
- Shortest Time to Close a Report
- Longest Time to Close a Report
All of these reports can also be broken down based on time period (ex: All reports from last 120 days, broken down by month or day). And, of course, all of the reports can be viewed on a map, giving a much needed geographical context.
We’ve implemented this solution on top of Azure in partnership with Microsoft. All of the reporting data will be stored in Azure Tables (for virtually infinite scalability) and the reports are batched processed by a Worker Role running in the Azure Cloud.
With the new Reporting application, our customers are now better equipped to analyze the data we’ve been collecting for them. Better analysis equals better decision making for both existing and future policy making. Better decision making will result in better quality of life for the residents of our customers. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. One can only imagine the possibilities: isolate gang movement and potential turf wars with graffiti analysis; locate infrastructure issues by seeing what streets are flooded most often; identify traffic and road usage by looking at potholes. The possibilities are truly endless!
If you’d like to see how these reports look and work, our sales team will be happy to drive you through an online demo. Feel free to contact them!
CitySourced Now Available on Windows Phone 7 (WP7)
Dec 16th
We finally got the word yesterday that our application, CitySourced, is now approved and available for download from the Windows Phone Marketplace. With all of our experience in mobile development, I must say (and of course I am biased), that developing for WP7 was an absolute dream. We’re a .NET shop so we’re very familiar with the Visual Studio IDE, the best IDE on the market currently hands down in my opinion. We could get into an argument over this – what about Eclipse or XCode or this or that? They all completely blow when compared to Visual Studio. Microsoft has really outdone themselves with VS2010. Anyway, I digress.
After downloading the required plugins for VS2010 to develop WP7 applications (I’ll make a separate blog post on my personal blog about that), we were off and running. We already had all the back end services created and working since we’re on the other platforms, so all we needed to worry about was the client end. WP7 applications are based on Silverlight and XAML, and while this is not my forte, I had taken a WPF & Silverlight bootcamp up at Microsoft in Redmond a few years ago.
All in all, it took us about 4 weeks to get our application wired up and working. Granted, there was no back end work to be done, but 4 weeks is pretty incredible (and I wasn’t working on it full time – probably 75% of my time). I brought in some outside help with James Richards, a really talented developer that has been working with us on many of the Esri components. We had about a week to clean up some final bugs, and we’ve finally passed the approval process. The approval process was great too. Our application just so happened to fail twice (I admit, I didn’t read the entire submission guide…), but the great thing about Microsoft’s approval process is that they give you a detailed report as to why the application failed and the steps to reproduce it! Having only dealt with Apple until now, all I have to say to that is “Wow”. Apple could definitely learn a thing or two from Microsoft when it comes to the app approval process.
So if you’re a mobile developer, and you’re wondering if you should take the dive into the world of WP7, our recommendation would be to go for it. From a developer standpoint, it was a great experience. And if you’re a .NET/C# developer, you’ll be cursing Apple and Objective-C and wondering why it wasn’t this easy to begin with. Microsoft definitely got a win on this one.
CitySourced Integrates San Francisco’s Open 311 System
May 5th
Mobile phone app connects citizens directly to city services
San Francisco — May 5th, 2010 — CitySourced, a real time mobile civic engagement company and a finalist at the 2009 TechCrunch50 conference, announced today that its innovative mobile phone application is now integrated with the San Francisco Open311 API to send reports from CitySourced directly to San Francisco’s 311 system. 311 systems allow citizens to connect directly with non-emergency government offices. This is an unprecedented public/private partnership that captures the essence of the Gov2.0 movement. This means citizens will be able to quickly photograph important issues in their community with their smart phones and receive feedback on when their issues get resolved. In addition to the photo, the CitySourced application delivers the physical address of the issue via GPS coordinates, date/time stamp, and the report type (graffiti, trash, pothole, etc.). CitySourced aims to reduce the amount of calls that come into city hall, helping to reduce costs, increase efficiency, as well as make it easier for city employees to verify issues using the rich data. The Open311 API allows CitySourced to take the initiative and deliver value through its application to the city of San Francisco. “CitySourced is changing the way citizens interact with city services,” said Chris Vein, City CIO. “The CitySourced application will give San Franciscans the power and ability to instantly report city issues, not only empowering their role as citizens, but making the city an even better and safer place to live.” In March 2010, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom launched Open311 API, allowing software developers to write web applications that interact directly with city departments.
CitySourced for San Francisco is available right now for free download in the Apple iTunes app store as ‘San Francisco 311′, and is launching in Q2 2010 on Blackberry & Android. CitySourced currently allows citizens in over 1900 cities nationwide to directly deliver citizen reports to city council and public works via e-mail. CitySourced is powered by FreedomSpeaks, the largest database of public officials in the United States. CitySourced has official integration with districts in San Jose and Los Angeles, California. Additional major cities have signed up to the service and are coming online in Q2 2010.
About CitySourced:
CitySourced is a real time mobile civic engagement tool. CitySourced provides 1) a free, simple, and intuitive tool empowering citizens to identify civic issues graffiti, trash, potholes etc.) and report them to city hall for quick resolution; 2) an opportunity for government to use technology to save money and be more accountable to those they govern; and 3) a positive, collaborative platform for real civic action. The platform is called CitySourced, as it empowers ordinary citizens to crowd source solutions for common civic issues. CitySourced is powered by FreedomSpeaks, the leader in interactive civic engagement.
For more information about CitySourced, including images, please visit CitySourced.com
For more information about FreedomSpeaks, please visit FreedomSpeaks.com
Contact: Kurt Daradics
Phone 323-540-4007
Email: kurt@citysourced.com
Join Us for Download Day LA!
Apr 13th
Following up on our announcement last week of Eric Garcetti’s adopting CitySourced, we are kicking it off with “Download Day” this Saturday April 17th.
We want to see a few of our LA Tech friends out to support CitySourced. You in? Please retweet!
Official Invite:
Join Council President Eric Garcetti, at the launching of Garcetti 3-1-1, A new iPhone App that allows Angelenos to easily report graffiti, potholes, and other problems with their iPhone!
Americans (SIPA) Community Room 3200 Temple Street Los Angeles, CA 90026
CitySourced Goes Hollywood
Apr 7th
Hello! In case you missed it yesterday Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti announced a launch of our platform, to be piloted in Los Angeles. The team here is excited to have CitySourced integrated in our very own hometown’s work flow. The full press release is after the jump. But now when you log an issue through city sourced in his district it will be brought directly to his attention. There will be an “Garcetti 311″ branded app in the app store and more news to come.
Full Press release below
GARCETTI ANNOUNCES NEW iPHONE APPLICATION
“Garcetti 311” by CitySourced will allow users
to submit service requests via iPhone
LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti today
announced “Garcetti 311,” a new application for iPhones that will
allow users to snap and submit photos of potholes, graffiti, and other
problems in his district for the city to address. The application,
developed by CitySourced, will be launched as a pilot program in
Garcetti’s Council District, which stretches from Hollywood to
Glassell Park.
“The new app empowers Angelenos to improve our neighborhoods by
providing a quick, easy way of letting city government know where
there are problems that need to be fixed. I’m proud to launch the
pilot program in my district,” said Council President Garcetti.
CitySourced to Leverage Microsoft’s Windows Azure Platform for their Government Customers
Feb 23rd
We got a very nice mention in Microsoft’s Public Sector Weblog today!
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CitySourced to Leverage Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform for their Government Customers
CitySourced has selected Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform as the foundation for their application infrastructure..
We will do a detailed blog-post over the next month or two, but below is a short one about FreedomSpeaks/CitySourced, goals to address their future needs, and broad outline of their plans to leverage Microsoft’s suite of Windows Azure services.
Background about the organization and the service – CitySourced is a real time mobile civic engagement tool. The CitySourced suite of applications has three main components. 1) The Console, which provides an administrative extranet for government agencies to manage the incoming customer support requests; 2) The Website, a consumer facing website encouraging citizens to engage with their local government as well as providing complete transparency to their government’s day-to-day operations; 3) A Smartphone application that enables citizens and residents to submit non-emergency service requests (i.e., potholes, graffiti, trash, snow removal, etc.) directly to their local government. The CitySourced platform presents a unique opportunity for government to use technology to both save money and improve accountability to those they govern. It also creates a positive, collaborative platform for real action. The mission of CitySourced is to transform civic engagement and enable citizens to make their communities a better place.
Here are some of the goals/drivers that led CitySourced to adopt cloud-based offering:
- CitySourced’s application utilized multi-layered architecture based on Microsoft ASP.NET on Windows Server 2003/IIS6.0 and SQL Server 2005 on three servers. CitySourced continues to get a lot of visibility in various cities around the country, and needed a plan to implement a scalable cloud based solution to handle the anticipated future demand.
- Focus was more on deliver better service and high-value features to both the government and consumer entities, so the goal was to stay away from hardware/software acquisition, management and monitoring of the infrastructure and the application.
- CitySourced also wanted to improve back-end job-processing service and log storage.
- CitySourced explored several options with the key goal being to avoid making major changes to their application code-base, in-memory cache layer and database layer.
- All of the above helped CitySourced choose Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform to host and manage the CitySourced application.
Goals & plans for Phase 1: (To be completed by March, 2010)
· Migrate the entire application infrastructure to Azure (web, cache, and databases) with a minimum amount of disturbance to their core business processes.
· Migrate with a minimal amount of refactoring to existing code (focusing on system changes, not code changes).
Goals & plans for Phase 2: (To be completed by May, 2010)
· Leverage Windows Azure Storage & Tables for more scalable storage of logs and other binary data (such as serialized hash tables and image blobs).
· Migrate their existing homegrown (and database dependent) queue workflow to Windows Azure Queue services.
· Offload jobs processing from Window’s based services onto dedicated worker instances.
Benefits & End-Result- CitySourced is confident that a cloud computing solution based on Microsoft Windows Azure will enable them to deliver better service to a broader audience (more customers) without worrying about infrastructure, software acquisition and service management.
High-Level architecture of their next-generation solution:
We Made the Finals for the Knight News Challenge!
Feb 23rd
We were encouraged to read this e-mail from the fine folks at the Knight Foundation.
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Dear Mr. Kralik – We have completed our review of your application to the Knight News Challenge.Congratulations! You have been selected to complete a full proposal.
Please remember that the Knight News Challenge contest requires several more steps before a final decision is made. This letter does not indicate that you have been selected to receive a grant.
You must complete your proposal form complying with the character limits and e-mail it along with your supporting materials by February 7, 2010.