Municipal Online Services Wishlist? 61
RaisinBread asks: "I may have an opportunity in the future to work for a decent-sized city. As such, I will likely work there for a short time to see how I fit before taking the job. After speaking to the City Manager about possibilities, he wondered what ideas I might have for potential projects. I have my own ideas, however I'd like to poll Slashdot on the following issue: What is on your wishlist for services you wish your own city would offer online? What existing services do you like or dislike?"
Complete City Council Agendas (Score:4, Interesting)
Online forms for bad street and traffic lights, sprinklers, etc with followup tracking.
Re:Complete City Council Agendas (Score:1)
Heh.
Re:Complete City Council Agendas (Score:2)
Re:Complete City Council Agendas (Score:1)
Re:Complete City Council Agendas (Score:3, Informative)
Geographical BBS (Score:1)
Fora (aka Forums) for neighborhood topics (Score:3, Interesting)
How 'bout wireless access everywhere ... (Score:2)
Re:How 'bout wireless access everywhere ... (Score:2)
Online Tax/Property Search (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd ideally like to also have a list of all ongoing road construction projects, estimated completion dates, as well as current progress (updated daily/weekly).
Re:Online Tax/Property Search (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.miwats.org/
Give 'em a ring. They're usually very nice.
Re:Online Tax/Property Search (Score:1)
Hmmm, but the tables of info it brought up have one of those ubiquetous 'shopping cart' icons on all the lines... hmmm...
A few simple things in one place (Score:3, Interesting)
The pulic library system is likely not something you can directly influence, already having their own inter-library loan system, etc, but arrangements with them perhaps to crosslink with your resources.
Re:A few simple things in one place (Score:1, Redundant)
online submissions, events (Score:2, Insightful)
Anonymous submissions to the sex offender registry (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Anonymous submissions to the sex offender regis (Score:1)
People found they had sex offenders living in the same flats as them (all of this was named by one news paper).
This then caused angry mob mentality. Instead of children getting abused, the children were seeing their parents go out and abuse another human (if thats what you call them.)
Also the problem with getting a name wrong is high. Imagine someone thought you were someone else?
A few things... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many times a few things would be handy, especially for people new to town:
That's just stuff off the top of my head that I would like to see myself.
Re:A few things... (Score:1)
Sorry for seeing a bit cynical here...
Re:A few things... (Score:2)
Traffic (Score:4, Interesting)
The Puget Sound area has great traffic info [wa.gov] online through WSDOT [wa.gov].
If you're in the IT dept, you'll probably have to coordinate with other departments, but this is a really useful app.
And, not only being able to pay your ticket online (Score:2)
Paul B.
Commuter information - mass transit and parking (Score:2, Informative)
One would be time tables for commuter transport or, better, a route planner [rejseplanen.dk] showing which buses and trains will get you from one address to another.
Another, would be to show parking lot status [p-henvisning.kk.dk]. This might be harder politically, if the city has balkanized its parking managment. But the idea would be to have information about how many emp
As little as possible (Score:3, Insightful)
Cities do need to do some things. Citywide wireless is not on that list of things. Nor is a health club. Nor...
If you want them, remove the barriers to private companies providing it. Sure it will take a little longer at first, but if the private company does a bad job people can switch. (Unless you stupidly give them a monopoly like most phone and cable companies have) Don't make me pay for your health club even though I get my exercise elsewhere. Don't make me pay for broadband that doesn't meet my needs.
Re:As little as possible (Score:2)
Re:As little as possible (Score:1)
regional announce e-mail lists (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:regional announce e-mail lists (Score:2)
I don't think too many cities would want to do that. Consider how much money the towing fees cost multiplied by number of cars towed, and that's how much the city would lose. Street cleaning is more of a revenue generator from parking fines than anything, considering how seldom they actually come through and clean the street. But yes, it would be a great idea if the city's revenue department were not opposed to it, which I know they would be.
A Map (Score:1)
Re:A Map (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A Map (Score:1)
Map Everything Online (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.milwaukee.gov/gis
The real question is, not what services can you provide over the web, but what services can you provide over the web
Re:Map Everything Online (Score:2)
Maybe look inside? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, last year, a professor at Ohio State told me that every month he is expected to go over his phone bill (from a university owned provider), then transfer all of the long distance calls onto a separate set of forms. These forms get submitted to the department secretary and from there I don't know where they go. Presumably, they are eventually re-entered into some system by hand. I don't know if the story is true, and it's not something I have to do. However it is the kind of convoluted manual information change I have grown to expect.
So back to my original point... instead of trying to create new services for the public, focus on cleaning up the city's information systems. They are probably a mess and if you are going to build public service sites on top of them, then you should address problems in the foundation before you start.
Besides, people with stable government jobs love it when you make their work much easier.
If you are going to create new services for the public and you are a big city, my vote is for traffic & parking. Create a website you can check on to discover if your car has been towed, pay associated fees, get email reminders for street sweeping dates, etc.
Re:Maybe look inside? (Score:1)
Not so sure about what you were saying about the duffs, however. They'll probably invoke Union Rights and stuff.
online govt meetings (Score:4, Interesting)
That's just the publicly funded stuff, not counting free classifieds and job listings, home schooling, community access television (publically created, not just publically viewed) etc. We've got more stuff online than most cities I've seen even of a much larger and more affluent scale around the US. My hat's off to any city that has any of this; they're doing more good than they know.
Virginia DMV (Score:3, Informative)
This is critical for us, because the wait at the DMV is usually 4-6 hours, even when you get there before opening.
The overall VA DOT site also has good info line which direction the HOV (express/commuter) lanes are going at any given time, and that info is in a fairly plain-html format that comes in handy when you want to load that information on a handheld.
250? (Score:2)
access, + access (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it's not typically in a town's purvue [purview?], but a lot of small towns are doing it.
2. ALL PUBLIC DATA which is available by walking into city hall,
should be available on the web.
My town has web access to assessor's data, but not up-to-date;
yet I CAN get the latest data at an online terminal in city hall.
And last week I asked for a list of all addresses with demolition permits in the last three years. It's not on the web, but they were happy to make me wait three days and pay $26 for them to run one simple SQL query.
Finally, the complete public library catalog, WITHOUT needing a library card just to see the catalog.
Free wireless! (Score:2)
Most cities won't be able to do this for the whole city, but it might be worth doing it for major centres, where a lot of tourist, artsy, or university people hang out; coffee shops especially. This sort of thing can increase traffic to local businesses, and can increase revenues to e.
Leave me alone. Stop taking my money. (Score:2, Insightful)
Push-service newsletters (Score:2)
Parking tickets (Score:1)
Online list of City Ordinances (Score:2)
Last year, I was ticketed in Cleveland Hts. Ohio for a noise violation (for blasting Christian rap from my vintage 1988 original (and totally blown out) speaker system in my car). I really wanted to figure out if I had any way out, because the fine was $120, and it seemed really vauge (the officer said that if you can hear something from 50 feet away, it's a violation- well, I could hear his motorcycle from
Transit projects (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want to see it, www.winnipegtransit.com, it's called "Navigo"
potholes (Score:2)
Not trying to be flamebait here, but building codes online would be very nice. i.e. what this local inspector will be looking for on a given type of job (like replacing a water heater - does this community require it to be on a stand, or have a "green sticker"?)
trouble ticketing & other ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Any controversial zoning issues (e.g.: strip clubs, major retail development, polluting factories, etc.) be posted for public comment.
Ability to order municipal-specific supplies online (e.g.: lawn waste bags, dump passes, recycling bags).
Log of where all of those _freakin'_ sirens are going -- sometimes a local paper will print a log of emergency calls, but not always. Nicer to link into police/ambulance/fire systems.
Scheduling for public resources, e.g.: pavillion at a town park.
Town calendar featuring both private and public events, integrating the police ball with the memorial day parade with the local high schools homecoming game on one calendar.
Allow the entry of an arbitrary address and get back relevent informaiton, such as school district including which elementary school & bus schedule, tax records, building permits, sale records, neighborhood information -- including things like how much police/criminal activity is in the area, etc. Make it easy to like this with MLS (real estate listing) systems.
Registry of tradespeople (roofers, plumbers, sewer & drain, odd-jobs, etc.) detailing their certifications, licenses, insurance status, and providing a amazon.com-like rating system where you can post your good/bad experience with them.
You wanted ideas --there ya go.
lower my taxes (Score:1)
Who says he doesn't? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is defeintely possible that this job is very well defined, but those doing the hiring know that, as it currently is, it will not take him 40 hours/week. In this case, it is the opposite of what you're saying - they are trying to make sure they get the most for their money.
Or, perhaps he's being hired as their website director. Again, this is hardly "wasting money" just because the
"Ask A City" (a'la google answers) (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure every department has a lot of time tied up in repeating themselves with the same question from citizens espeically seasonal questions (lawn wate
ALL forms online (Score:1)
try and collect as many state forms too.
Energy consumtion tracking... (Score:1)
Water/Sewer Bills (Score:1)
wishlist (Score:2)
available in report form and through a GIS Maping Portal (Arc IMS), with data geocoded, so users may see info by neighborhood, street and by parcel for public parcels(parks, schools), commercial, retail, multi-famliy housing and rental