With the launch of its new comparative widget, SeeClickFix announces a new way to rank the responsiveness and activity of local municipalities across the globe. Through this effort, SeeClickFix hopes to encourage greater civic engagement, promote accountability from both governments and residents, and expand the channels available for disseminating public information. Coinciding with the launch, SeeClickFix also unveils its new widget generator to offer more expansive and customizable features for government, news media, and users alike for integrating the citizen-reporting platform.

Available today, the comparative widget allows municipalities, news outlets, and residents to visually display the civic activity (Activity Score) and responsiveness (Results Score) of their communities directly on their websites. The Activity Score answers the question “How active is your community?” and is based on the number of the issues, comments, users, and watch areas within specified geographic boundaries—whether it be a city, neighborhood, or block. The Results Score is based on how many issues have been resolved in that same area.

The comparative widget allows individuals to select the regions they want to compare, from large metropolitan areas like New York City and Chicago to Boston neighborhoods like Beacon Hill and the North End. Once generated, the widget will sort the selected communities by their scores and also include their site statistics. For example, users can see how many comments have been posted or how many issues have been closed.

In conjunction with this feature, SeeClickFix also released its new widget generator to allow for greater functionality and customization of its text and map widgets. Already embedded on hundreds of websites, the map and text widgets put the power of the SeeClickFix platform directly on your website—publicly communicating and visualizing non-emergency issues from problems like potholes and graffiti to improvements like planting trees and installing bike racks. From platforms like Blogger and Tumblr to news websites like Boston.com and Washington Post Local, anyone can connect with their targeted audiences over the most pressing concerns in their communities through SeeClickFix.

Through these dynamic widgets, SeeClickFix users can submit and monitor problems, post comments, vote to fix issues or update their status, and sign up to receive real-time alerts. Anything submitted will sync with the other channels including SeeClickFix.com, Facebook App, and smartphone applications for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. Once submitted, the issue will become publicly available and also sent to anyone signed up to receive alerts for the geographic region, allowing important information to be quickly and efficiently communicated.

With the widget generator, users can customize SeeClickFix for their site based on widget type, color palette, layout and dimensions, status and keyword filters, and geographic region. When generating the widget, users can now select custom categories to display only certain types of issues on the widget, from ‘Bike Concern’ and ‘Blighted Property’ to ’Snow’ and ‘Sidewalk.’

The new widget generator can be found here.