Guest post by Thomas Gaudett, Superstar SeeClickFix Intern

As a Government major at Harvard and citizen concerned about my community, it excites me when we as a society come up with new and innovative ways to solve problems that we face collectively. Having been acquainted with SeeClickFix over these last few months, I have discovered such a tool. The services that SeeClickFix offers to citizens and local officials can easily and rightfully be construed as revolutionary. And in this new age of technology and innovation, I have discovered two great ways that SeeClickFix is making the world a better place.

The first thing I discovered was that SeeClickFix assists citizens when reporting problems to local governments, especially issues that might otherwise not be reported. In particular, I have realized the benefits of working to fix pothole issues in local communities across the country. For example, the MTA of the San Francisco Bay Area publishes a pothole report every year. In this report, the MTA makes it clear that there is real cost savings in dealing with potholes up front when they are an issue rather than waiting until the street further deteriorates. The report says that preventive measures made by cities cost about $1 to repair a piece of roadway. It increases to $5 if they wait to perform major rehabilitation. Knowing about these non-emergency issues before they are major problems is a way to reduce costs to enact preventive rather than reactive measures. By encouraging citizens to report potholes and making governments aware of them,  SeeClickFix is helping in this process of trimming local government budgets, which are very tight at the moment.

Upon further research, I have realized that SeeClickFix is indirectly helping to achieve a greener earth. Consider this: cities often set a goal of reducing their carbon footprints. According to a June 2009 Caltrans report Prioritization of Transportation Projects for Economic Stimulus with Respect to Greenhouse Gases, smooth pavement reduces GHG emissions by improving vehicles’ fuel economy while low cost preventive measures lead to fewer greenhouse gas emissions. This is due to the need to produce less asphalt or other paving materials, and the need for fewer truck trips to transport materials to and from the worksite. By documenting and ultimately helping resolve street-related issues in a timely fashion, SeeClickFix is working with communities to create a greener earth.

Every day, the SeeClickFix community is realizing the benefits of the services it provides citizens and local governments. These are just two more to add to the list. This certainly encourages all of us to go out and report issues using the SeeClickFix mobile apps. Improving our communities never felt so good!

We love technology. We love media. We really love when those two join forces and create one amazing result. One of our media partners, the Journal Register Company, perfectly exemplifies this symbiotic relationship with its 'digital first' strategy.

CEO John Paton recently spoke with NetNewsCheck.com about how the Journal Register Co. has used its new online strategy (which includes SeeClickFix) to reinvent itself while simultaneously becoming "on par with the best in the newspaper industry."

Flashback to three years ago: the Journal Register Co. looked like "one of the newspaper industry’s worst black eyes" with its accumulating debt, delisting of its stock, and subsequent bankruptcy. Today, the company has completely transformed itself, "emphasizing content and sales while shedding printing plants and above all, focusing on building online readership."

Part of this transformation? Crowdsourcing with SeeClickFix.

Clearly they’ve [bloggers] played a role in expanding our content offerings and expanding our audience. As has our partnering with companies like SeeClickFix, which is a phenomenal success for us. SeeClickFix lets us do old-fashioned journalism about fixing a pothole here or raising an alarm about a dangerous intersection there.

With SeeClickFix, news outlets like the JRC can stay up-to-date on the issues that directly impact the communities they serve---engaging and empowering citizens along the way. What happens in neighborhoods affects individuals in very immediate, personal ways. Through our widget feature, media outlets can connect with their audiences over these concerns and allow residents to report community issues directly through their website--thereby making the site more interactive and relevant to residents.  Just look at the New Haven Register or the News-Herald.

News outlets can then receive email alerts about those issues being reported through 'watch areas' containing the counties, cities, or neighborhoods they cover. These publicly documented SeeClickFix issues can even serve as content for media outlets (see Gripe of the Day), creating new space for public debate, and even leading to investigation and resolution of those matters.

To learn even about the JRC and its growing digital strategy, check out NetNewsCheck.

Citizens waiting at a bus stop in Charlotte, NC weren't alone in needing a lift recently. After seeing an electrical cable hanging dangerously low near the corner of Cedar and Trade, a concerned WBTV News 3 viewer reported the problem through a SeeClickFix map widget on our media partner's site. Citizen reporter Dan M. wrote:

Why has a power line been allowed to droop dangerously low at Cedar and Trade? This has been in this condition for more than a week!!! A 5 foot tall lady at the bus stop could easily grab it.

Before: A Cable Close Call

WBTV Morning Anchor Christie Nelson was alerted as soon as the issue was reported and immedietly began contacting numerous city agencies to see who could fix the problem. After a few phone calls, the Charlotte DOT was notified and quickly dispatched a crew to fix the drooping line. Wednesday afternoon, WBTV learned that the cable was gone and the problem was solved!

After: Out of Reach Thanks to WBTV!

SeeClickFix is thankful for our media partners who help to continually broadcast community issues that need to be addressed. Pedestrian Carl Campbell, interviewed by WBTV, sums up our feelings pretty perfectly...

"I am glad WBTV is out here Channel 3. I look at your news and I'm glad you're out here trying to do something for us,"

We're glad too! 

SeeClickFix has helped revolutionize the way citizens communicate with local government. Our growing roster of government clients have all taken a huge step forward by implementing our open, transparent platform and choosing to publicly document their actions (or the lack thereof). In doing so, governments using SeeClickFix have a pretty excellent motivation for consistently communicating with citizens and getting non-emergency issues fixed fast: accountability.

Elected officials don't want the "crowdsouced finger" pointed their way, but is the accountability that comes from public information only applicable for motivating government to act? A recent post by Terra Curtis on The Living Labs Global Mobility Report, SeeClickFix and Accountability, touches upon the importance of accountability for everyone involved in the SeeClickFix ecosystem.

When performing a survey of web and mobile apps that could be useful for bicycle and pedestrian planning, I identified SeeClickFix as a promising tool.  Not only did it encourage citizen participation but it made available to the public the resulting data.  This could be valuable information to the planner trying to identify hotspots for capital improvements.  However, one shortcoming I found was that no one was being held accountable for following up on all the issues.

Over 50% of issues reported online to SeeClickFix have been resolved offline in communities throughout the world. Now imagine how many issues would be fixed if all citizens felt as accountable as their local government for ensuring problems in their community are solved. While much of the article is focused on government accountability, ("It wouldn’t reflect very nicely on the city to have 1,000 outstanding issues and none of them actually addressed,"), she closed with some great questions about how accountability among our users can help more issues get from "open" to "closed".

What else could provide the needed accountability?  What is SeeClickFix published response rates for all cities, providing a letter grade of A for the most tech-savvy, responsive cities (the carrot) and a letter grade F for unresponsive cities (the stick)?  What if the citizen who creates (or follows) an issue gets pinged when the issue has gone unsolved for a designated amount of time?  What if SeeClickFixers get extra “Civic Points” for getting several users to sign on to a campaign to solve a particularly stale issue?

While SeeClickFix users can already view our Top Performing Cities or receive reminders about issues they have reported, this article has us thinking about what else we can do. How can we promote accountability on SeeClickFix? What can we do to help citizens and local governments share the responsibility of raising the fix rate to well over 50%? What more can we do to empower our users online to take action in their offline community? Do you have an idea about how SeeClickFix can accomplish this? Comment here, shoot us an email or send a tweet to @seeclickfix with your ideas on promoting accountability for all!

From June 13 through June 24,  Omidyar Network and OATV went head-to-head to see which organization could report the most issues in just two weeks---while simultaneously improving their communities. It was an action-packed 2 weeks for both our teams. Issues were reported, problems were acknowledged, concerns were closed and neighborhoods were improved thanks to the hard work of Team Omidyar and Team OATV.

In two weeks, Team OATV reported 22 issues, 6 of which were closed and 10 of which were acknowledged by San Francisco 311. Through reporting issues, commenting on their neighbors concerns, and creating a public watch area in the Bay Area, OATV racked up a whopping total of 880 Civic Points, launching the team to Municipal Avenger status!

Civic Crusader Team Omidyar reported a total of 15 issues, with 10 issues closed and 4 issues acknowledged. The team helped to improve their community while earning an impressive 500 Civic Points during the 2 week challenge. 



The SeeClickFix team would like to give special recognition (aka mad props) to Team Omidyar reporter KLM. Having reported the most issues of any other participant, we're happy to award KLM the title of official SeeClickFix VC Battle Royale MVP. 

Thank you to both teams for your hard work and commitment to your communities. Although the challenge is over, we hope both teams continue SeeClickFixin' issues and improvements around the Bay Area and beyond!

New Haven, Conn. (June 27, 2011) – Southern Connecticut State University and SeeClickFix announce a new partnership to simultaneously empower the campus community and improve the institution’s physical environment. The university will leverage SeeClickFix’s place-based reporting platform to address non-emergency problems reported on campus, ranging from broken windows and glass to damaged sidewalks and graffiti.

“Since our launch a few years ago, we’ve partnered with countless cities, media outlets, and community groups nationwide and overseas,” said Ben Berkowitz, SeeClickFix CEO. “Now, that list has expanded to include academic institutions thanks to SCSU. We look forward to seeing how our online technology helps create offline results.”

With the reporting platform, students, faculty, and staff can report quality-of-life campus concerns through custom service request categories through the online, mobile (iPhone, Android, and Blackberry), and Facebook platforms, and also provide additional information about the problem through the description or image options. Once someone submits an issue, the reporter and those responsible for fixing the problem will receive email notifications. The facilities department can then acknowledge the service request and update the issue page once it’s been resolved.

The partnership allows individuals to not only report campus issues, but also view, comment on, and vote to fix problems submitted by others. They can even create “watch areas” to receive notifications about issues reported on campus, enabling individuals to follow the progress of all service requests.

Robert G. Sheeley, Associate Vice President for Capital Budgeting & Facilities Operations, introduced the idea of partnering SCSU with SeeClickFix. Sheeley believes SeeClickFix will enhance the capabilities and responsiveness of the facilities department through its transparent and accessible platform.

“With this public, user-friendly forum, we can more efficiently address campus concerns and more closely connect with students, faculty, and staff to solve these problems that impact everyone,” he said.

Thomas Struble, Coordinator of Property/Inventory/Stores/Receiving, will administer SeeClickFix on campus.

“It will improve the lines of communication between campus facilities and the people it serves while also creating a safer and more vibrant environment,” he said.

With commuters comprising the majority of SCSU’s student population, interim president Dr. Stanley Battle hopes SeeClickFix will engage both on-campus and off-campus students.

“Our goal is to engage all students, not just the ones living on campus, and encourage them to improve their surroundings,” he said. “SeeClickFix places the power directly in the hands of the campus community.”

The SeeClickFix widget, mobile applications, and Facebook App can be found here.

About SeeClickFix

SeeClickFix allows citizens anywhere in the world to report and monitor non-emergency community issues ranging from potholes and planted trees to garbage and graffiti. Launched in 2008, it empowers citizens, community groups, media organizations, and governments to work together and improve their neighborhoods. Through mobile web, web, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry apps, the SeeClickFix platform is the most widely-distributed citizen reporting tool in the country. The platform is fun and easy to use for citizens while being inexpensive and easily adaptable for governments. For more information on SeeClickFix or to report an issue, visit www.seeclickfix.com.

In the last few months you may have noticed some new team members at SCF. We wanted to give a belated welcome and a huge thank you to Jeff Mooney, Megan Dalton, Emma Richards and Greta Hotop. I'll be following up with individual posts on each of them in the coming weeks but we wanted to start by highlighting the community management and partner development team as a whole as we're truly impressed with their ability to strengthen and grow the SCF neighborhood. We also wanted to offer a big thank you to Amanda Smyth from Fairfield University and Thomas Gaudett from Harvard University who are interning with us this Summer and providing support to the team while learning about working at a rapidly scaling start-up.

The new team has been busy with new media partners, existing media partners, new and old SideClicks on 6 continents and signing on the host of new governments to SCF Plus. Also, as the default frontman for SCF its been really exciting to see that role distributed to Megan who recently did an Ignite presentation at Sparkcamp, Emma who spoke in Barcelona at Barcelona Digital Congress and Jeff who has spoken at City Camp Raleigh and MCitizen in DC. Its a great feeling as a founder to be able to trust that our initial vision is being represented equally passionately through the evangelism of early employees.

As a last note I also wanted to acknowledge the hard work that some of the team members have been putting into improving our own community here in New Haven and surrounding areas. Emma and Greta haven been helping to fix an SCF issue that I raised a few years ago and soon Megan, Tom, Amanda, Kam and I will be assisting as well. Through a tree planting initiative with the Urban Resources Initiative in New Haven the team has and will be planting trees under the Humphrey Street Overpass so that it becomes equally an Underpass. It is important to us that team members at SCF not only talk about fixing communities but also get their hands dirty and do some fixing themselves. Read more about the trees being planted here:

Community Manager Emma Richards and SCF Super User David Streever Fixing up the neighborhood

A huge welcome and thank you to the new team members helping communities around the world help themselves.