Houston, TX (January 29, 2013) - Today, Mayor Annise Parker joined the City of Houston's 311 Help & Info to launch the all-new 311 Smartphone app. The Smartphone app is the newest addition to 311's entirely new design focused on maximizing citizen engagement.

"I am excited to join 311 today to announce the redesigned 311 Help & Info," said Mayor Parker. "The old 311 was inefficient and failed to meet Houston's needs. The new 311 is a completely transformed entity which places focus exactly where it should be; on the customer. Today, Houstonians can reach 311 through a variety of channels that are convenient and easy to use."

The City of Houston launched the 311 Houston Service Helpline in August 2001 as a telephone helpline, and the technology backbone which ran the system became rigid and inflexible over time. Now, 311 Help & Info users are able to submit service requests via the new Smartphone app, the redesigned website, email or by calling the 24/7 call center. The new 311 system is more flexible, convenient, efficient, and customer-focused than ever in Houston’s history. Additionally, the new 311 empowers citizens to join the City’s effort to improve the community by making it easy for them to report issues that need to be resolved.

"I am so proud of where 311 is today and look forward to where it's going in the future," said Frank Carmody, who oversees 311 Help & Info. "We want to hear from Houston's citizens and we are working to create as many avenues as possible to allow them to communicate with us on their terms: When they want, how they want, and with whom they want."

Prior to 311's transformation, the 311 Call Center provided telephone Service Request and information service 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Due to budget-required layoffs in FY2012, 311 had to stop offering service on the weekends. As of August 15, 2012, 311 Help & Info launched 24 hour a day, seven day a week service. Additionally, 311 installed a labor model that more closely matches the demands of Houstonians. Furthermore, the service extension was implemented at an operating cost to the City of $600,000 less per year than the former 311 Call Center model.

In addition to expanded call-center hours and the new Smartphone app, 311's redesigned website, www.Houston311.org, enables Houstonians to easily submit a request for service online. For example, the 311 website only received 2,144 "hits" in January 2011. In January 2013, following its redesign, the website received more than 13,485 "hits." Over the past week, 311 has also launched a new interactive mapping tool that allows Houstonians to track the progress of their request and view other requests in the area.

"The work that went into building these new customer tools really epitomizes the City's approach to customer service," said Parker. "A cross-functional team comprised of executives from my office, the Public Works & Engineering, Information Technology Services, Planning, and ARA departments worked together with a vendor, SeeClickFix, for months to bring these new services to the public. The result captures how I expect us to serve our citizens: we use one simple, convenient doorway into the City, an effective communication and coordination system, and thousands of workers from many departments are called to action. We can now provide a way for Houstonians to see our follow through. We have created the ability for citizens that fund these services to track where and when the City responded to their request."

"It is because of our agents' dedication to customer satisfaction that 311 continues to become more and more successful every day," said Carmody. "When a citizen reports a problem, they can rest assured their issue will be reviewed. In fact, the City stands firmly by its high-level service agreement which requires the completion of every service request within a certain period of time."

The recent 311 upgrades improve two-way communications between the City and its citizens, resulting in drastically higher engagement by Houstonians. However, the City's 311 Help & Info leaders work constantly to expand and improve 311 functions to better meet Houston’s needs. In addition to other future plans for 311, including the launch of a call-back assist program and SMS texting service requests, the next versions of the Smartphone app and website map tracking tool are already being designed.

"Today is really about re-introducing Houstonians to 311 Help & Info," said Parker. "This new Smartphone app and newly redesigned website marks the beginning of many upgrades to come. The nature of technology in our society today is to iterate and improve, and the new 311 will not be an exception to that."

The SeeClickFix team is thrilled to announce our partnership with the City of Winston-Salem, NC and the launch of their new CityLink 311 app for iPhone and Android! Check out the city's announcement below to learn more about how Winston-Salem residents now have the power to report public space concerns right in their pocket.  The CityLink 311 app for iPhone and Android is available for download today!

Winston-Salem residents can now contact CityLink, the city’s 24-hour citizen service center, with the new CityLink 311 mobile application for iPhone and Android. The app is available for smartphones and tablets.

The CityLink 311 app uses GPS to automatically report the location for the service request. Users can report a different location if applicable. The app also allows citizens to take a photo and submit it with their service request. Reports are automatically sent to city departments for resolution, and with the app, users can follow their issue from the time it is reported until it is resolved.

Citizens can also use the app to view a map showing all CityLink requests for service and can determine what those service requests are about. They can see if another citizen has reported the same issue and reiterate that request with a few clicks. The app also gives users the option of calling a CityLink agent. The app is free and is available through Apple’s App Store and Google’s Google Play. To download the app, search the App Store or Google Play for “CityLink 311.”

First-time users must register so that the application can follow their request. It also gives CityLink agents the ability to contact the citizen if they have a follow-up question about the request. For more information about the CityLink 311 mobile app, call CityLink 311.

Director of Citizen Engagement
Location: New Haven, CT
 
http://seeclickfix.com

SeeClickFix uses the power of public and distributed communication via the web to bring citizens closer to their local government and each other. Through partnerships with local media, governments and social user features SeeClickFix has spread all over the United States and is starting to spread internationally. The SeeClickFix platform reaches millions of eyeballs each month and consists of content contributed by hundreds of thousands of users…and the party is just getting started.

As Director of Citizen Engagement you will be tasked with cultivating and fostering a strong online community that is respectful to one another and works collectively at a local level to improve their communities off-line. Moderating and guiding local communities online to make a real difference in their community offline will be your main focus at SeeClickFix.

This position is for full-time employment, on-site at our office in downtown New Haven, CT. 

What We're Looking For

The right person for the job will be patient and optimistic and know how to translate that ethic into written and verbal form. You need to be able to turn an upset user into a user for life. While you don’t have to have worked at a start-up previously you need to be prepared to work at a start-up. What does this mean? Start-up culture and SeeClickFix culture is one of dedication to the community over everything else. You must be prepared to carry weight for others and take on tasks outside of your typical responsibilities when needed. You need to be ready to be as important to the organization as the founders. SeeClickFix’s hierarchy is flat and everyone in the office is an equal decision maker. You will be involved in conversations about features and have a vote on matters related to the platform. 
Most importantly we want you be really really ridiculously smart and fun. We also really want you to care about civic engagement and stronger neighborhoods. 

The ideal Director of Citizen Engagement will have:
• Really Really Ridiculously good written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to tackle small sometimes redundant tasks quickly and painlessly
• A strong like for twitter and other social media but not the kind of love affair where you think it’s the answer to everything.
• A strong like for SeeClickFix to the extent that you think it’s the answer for everything
• Ability to write creative and interesting blog posts about sometimes mundane things like reporting potholes
• Understanding of civics and local government structure
• Planted a tree in their neighborhood or at least picks up trash when they see it on the ground
• A sense of humor in the office and with SeeClickFix users
• Used SeeClickFix and has an understanding of the way the tool works
• A bachelor’s degree or be Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg

Bonus Traits for brownie points:

♣ Some knowledge of html or design tools 
♣ Fast hands on the Ping Pong table
♣ Likes bicycles more than cars
♣ Bilingual
♣ Multilingual
♣ A user profile on SeeClickFix with over 200 civic points


How We're Different

Join a growing startup team that is connecting 100,000's of citizens to each other and their local Government international and currently in 12 different languages. Our data feeds are distributed by hundreds of media partners who use the data to inform readers and hold government accountable. SeeClickFix is a revenue generating and is backed by Venture funds founded by the founder of Ebay, Pierre Omidyar and the Prophet of Silicon Valley, Tim O’Reilly

Come join us in remaking the user interface to government. Power to the community!

We believe treating our employees right is important to doing great work. Here are the benefits we're offering right now:

♣ Competitive Salary
♣ Equity — Everyone who works here owns a bit of the company's success
♣ Conferences — Continue your learning at conferences and we'll pick up the tab
♣ Health insurance benefits
♣ Three weeks paid time off

Please email your resume and cover letter to Ben@SeeClickFix.com

To start this post we need to reiterate that calling 911 in an emergency should always be done prior to posting on SeeClickFix.  As this issue documents, you create a lot of value created by calling 911 and then posting on SeeClickFix.  In this case, the issue did not necessarily constitute an emergency to the reporter and he was unsure if 911 was the appropriate channel.  Thanks to an open conversation we all received insight into a rare, potentially dangerous event and learned how to handle it going forward. Ever heard of "Stray Voltage"? Neither had we until this post, but it's real, and it can kill a human if unaddressed.

On Wednesday, a dog walker and SeeClickFix-er, "Concerned Resident," reported an unusual issue that he had suspected for some time but was not able to put his finger on until he chatted with another dog walker in the neighborhood.  Last year, "Concerned Resident"would walk his old dog by Grove Street Cemetery until one day the dog yelped and then later refused to walk on that side of the street.   He was skeptical about what was going on and asked a few folks what they thought. The only explanation that anyone came up with was that there were "spirits from the cemetery." If any cemetery possesses spirits able to outrun the grave, it's this one. To give some context to individuals outside New Haven,  there are some very powerful individuals buried in the Grove Street Cemetary. As a quick history lesson, notables buried in the cemetery include Walter Camp (the father of American Football), Noah Webster (publisher of the modern English dictionary), Josiah Gibbs (the father of thermodynamics), Charles Goodyear (inventor of vulcanized rubber), Jeddidiah Morse (father of American geography), Roger Sherman (a founding father and the only person to sign all four documents of American sovereignty), many Senators , Congressman and SeeClickFix's personal favorite, Eli Whitney (inventor of the cotton gin).

"Concerned Resident" put thoughts about the cemetery aside until he started to walk his new dog. He was startled to find that this dog would not walk on that side of the street either.  Recently he advised another dog walker to avoid that side of the street. The other walker replied that he already was avoiding that side on his dog's orders.  In their conversation they raised the possibility of stray electrical voltage similar to the cause of death of Jodie Lane in NYC in 2004.  Still skeptical that this was the case, they were hesitant to call 911 and so "Concerned Resident" posted on SeeClickFix, Potentially Life Threatening Voltage Leakage On Sidewalk.

Fortunately, New Haven has a host of responsible civil servants who chimed in to assist: the Livable Cities Initiative, The Emergency Operations Center and the Chief Administrative Officer.  The Fire Department was notified immediately.

• 

  LCI Watcher

  The Fire Department has been notified.

  2013-01-10 · Flag
• 

  EOC

  This reported issue has been reviewed. An immediate response to this has been initiated.
  Rick Fontana, New Haven Emergency Operations Center

  2013-01-10 · Flag
• 

  Rob Smuts

  Anything involving an immediate threat to life, health or property, please call in to 9-1-1. Emails and SCF issues should be for non-emergency issues.

  2013-01-10 · Flag

  
  

  
  

Not to the surprise of "Concerned Resident," it turned out that the pooches were right to avoid that side of the street. There was indeed stray electrical voltage causing the animals to feel uncomfortable.  Not to the surprise of SeeClickFix the mechanical culprit was identified and repaired within 48 hours of the initial report:

CLOSED Concerned Resident (Guest)

-B

Two days ago New Haven User Natalie reported that the right hand partner to her left hand mitten had gone for walkabout. Her and her Husband walked the whole neighborhood looking for the mitten for hours to no avail so she thought she'd try SeeClickFix.  http://seeclickfix.com/issues/348836

Streetfight featured an interview with SeeClickFix CEO Ben Berkowitz as a part of its daily roundup of Hyperlocal content. Here are some highlights from the piece:

We just had our first coyote report in New Haven on SeeClickFix.  I tweeted the internetz with w the find and our ever lovable pal @JSB from the Knight Foundation responded back with this article about a thriving urban coyote population in North America.

This morning the Toronto Star's fixer column, powered by SeeClickFix, reported on a coyote deer attack in their daily column.    Interest peaked I did a quick data dive on SeeClickFix into the reported coyote population.  I was surprised with the number of reports that were out there.  In 2012 there were 50 coyote related reports in North America;  double the total number of coyote reports from the three years prior combined. The number of total issues created on SeeClickFix has roughly doubled from the year before so its fair to say that the data reflects the general trend that urban coyote's are on the rise and encountering people more frequently.

As wildlife returns to many of our urban areas it will be interesting to see what else pops up in the data.

Recently I was asked to participate in a citizen review group gathered to give feedback on a proposal by Project for Public Spaces for the New Haven Green. I have lots of opinions about the New Haven Green but I would rather open it up to New Haven users of SeeClickFix to gather feedback than just return mine.

Here is a link to the plan: http://www.pps.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/New-Haven-Green-Placemaking-Plan-v2.pdf

Please add your comments in the comments below.  There was an email sent to the group today calling for a last call for review.   It's your green what do you think?

SeeClickFix Community, 2012 has been a remarkable year for all of us. Around the world our friends and neighbors have been actively engaging in their communities and taking real action to make their neighborhoods better. Citizens, municipal workers, elected officials, small businesses and utilities have brought the annual fix rate to an all-time-high of 66%. Over 200,000 issues have been resolved as of this month.   Together you have openly discussed your concerns and worked with your neighbors and governments to resolve them in a way that makes the most sense for your neighborhood. Our municipal users deserve an extra big hand this year as 2012 was the year for embracing open communication and customer service in government. 135 cities and towns from Canada to Australia now use SeeClickFix as their primary web and mobile communication channel and thousands more are actively responding to requests.  More and more we see harmony between the way the SeeClickFix community wants to communicate with their local governments and the way that local governments want to communicate with their community.   Here's some of our highlights from the year. If we missed something awesome let us know and we'll post it on the blog or the facebook page.  What we built with you and your government: The SeeClickFix Dashboard is now being used by 135 City Clients and includes a boatload of new features including the ability to assign and re-categorize issues, create work orders and generate beautiful reports.  We have whitelabeled our marketplace mobile applications for a number of cities and one State so that the app is searchable under their brand and keywords. This month we also released the ability to add additional information pages to your custom application dynamically through our easy to use content management system.   We have started to test a knowledge base and question and answer platform in select cities to help citizens and governments learn from each other in a scalable way that saves money and easy to implement.  Two cities have already signed on for early launch and we’re still accepting early adopters at a discounted rate.  We are also starting to experiment with crowdfunding and have helped to successfully fund a few projects in New Haven.  Some Partner City Highlights The Cities of Minneapolis and Oakland have been longtime users of SeeClickFix and this year both Cities launched deeper integrations with the platform and became clients. In Minneapolis we launched marketplace mobile applications for the city and in Oakland we integrated with their CityWorks Work order system.  Richmond, VA, Surrey British Columbia and a number of other towns  also became clients of our CityWorks connect offering.  Washington DC also launched their marketplace mobile applications with SeeClickFix and have done a tremendous job marketing the apps on subway posters and parking meter stickers.  We also launched connections with Chicago 311 and Toronto 311 and assisted many small towns and FEMA during Hurricane Sandy.  As a result of the Toronto 311 connection we also launched our largest media partner the Toronto Star who just listed SeeClickFix as the best thing they’ve done all year. All in all 15 Million new citizens were affected by these new relationships around the globe.   The new year will start off with a bang as well as we launch marketplace mobile applications and integrate with Houston’s CRM Kana, an integration with Oracle in Albuquerque and with 35 towns in Massachusetts through the Commonwealth Connect application that we have built for the State.  There also were a number of deals signed at the end of 2012 from California to North Carolina that we have not let the cat out of the bag yet on.  Stay tuned for those!  User Highlights 5 years on the job and still my favorite part of working at SeeClickFix is witnessing the anecdotal evidence that SeeClickFix is enabling collaboration between citizens and governments. Each of the resolved 200,000 issues are a little neighborhood victory, and they all deserve to be celebrated.  A few of our favorites fixes from 2012: The Long Awaited Left Turn: A persistent Mom improved the safety of an intersection near a school after a year of work. Giving a Hoot: An owl family was saved thanks to a diligent Park Ranger.  Spring Cleaning with SeeClickFix: A town in Canada uses SeeClickFix to coordinate its yearly clean up efforts. As the first full-time employee at SeeClickFix the most remarkable thing for me has been watching the growth of the team to fifteen full-time employees. Those 15 folks are dedicating their lives to helping you make your neighborhoods better. If you want to help them we’d love it if you would introduce SeeClickFix to your neighbors or your local government. If you are in local government we’d love to show you all that has been built in the last year. We think you’ll like it.  You can email me or contact the team at contact@seeclickfix.com. Happy Holidays and here’s to collaboratively improving neighborhoods in 2013! Ben

Macon, Georgia has been very happy with its decision to partner with SeeClickFix.  SeeClickFix has helped the City to respond to more citizen concerns with greater efficiency than ever before. This dynamic was described in a recent story about SeeClickFix in the Macon Telegraph:

"Since Macon began taking basic service calls through web-based SeeClickFix, requests for city work have gone up by 20 percent, according to Amanda Deaton, assistant chief administrative officer for budget and planning.

That’s fallen most heavily on the Public Works Department, which already got the lion’s share of requests.

Despite the increased workload, responsiveness apparently hasn’t suffered; and if anything it’s improved..."

The article goes on to highlight the positive experience of Macon resident Ben Sapp,

"Sapp put in the SeeClickFix request on a Sunday evening. As he was on his way to work Monday morning, a Public Works employee called in response. The worker was already in the alley, preparing to cut down the tree, Sapp said.

'He couldn’t have been at work 10 minutes before he turned around and checked it out,' Sapp said."

Sapp isn't the only Macon resident who likes using SeeClickFix.  Of 882 reports made in November, 80% of them were closed before the end of the month.

We're thrilled to see how successful SeeClickFix has been in Macon!

In August we flew to Berlin to accept an Urban Innovation award from Mashable and BMW. This week the blog giant has listed SeeClickFix as one of the 35 Urban Innovations to watch for 2013.  We were listed alongside a number of notable projects worth checking out including the Chicago Tech Academy, apps like WAZE for getting around town faster and of course our personal favorite Code For America.

Mashable has done a great job of documenting the growing pop nature of urban innovation. In a time when massive corporations like Philips, software start-Ups Like Waze and small kickstarter projects like softwalk are all working to make our cities more livable places it can be hard to keep up.
Thanks Mashable for being on the pulse. Here's to 2013 being the year of Urban Innovation.

Article Here

It turns out, the feeling is mutual! In the first post of 2013, "The Fixer" himself (Jack Lackey) ranks this as their crowning achievement from the previous year:

And the introduction of SeeClickFix as a new way to simultaneously report issues to us and the city qualifies as the best thing we did in the past year to assist our readers.

Right back at you, Jack! We all look forward to helping the Toronto Star "fix" many more civic and community issues reported by readers, such as this obstructed bike lane that was just resolved today.

Happy New Year, Toronto! Keep on reporting.

-Zack
@zbeat