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Communications The Internet

Municipal Online Services Wishlist? 61

Posted by Cliff from the city-services-on-the-web dept.
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?"
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Municipal Online Services Wishlist? More

Municipal Online Services Wishlist?

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  • Complete City Council Agendas (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:24PM (#10155459)
    At least 3 days before the meetings. Also committee agendas.

    Online forms for bad street and traffic lights, sprinklers, etc with followup tracking.
  • Offer it on your servers and in the libraries. Forums, both on and off topic, anything.

  • Fora (aka Forums) for neighborhood topics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tiamat ( 25392 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:30PM (#10155478)
    Slashdot had a recent post about neighborhood/zip based resources, but this is another great place to house them. Neighbors could exchange ideas/strategies for accomplishing regional specific things like commuting paths, best places to get a cup-of-joe, etc.. It would also be nice to have blogging by gov't officials, to get a sense that the person is actually thinking about the job, and the issues they are employed to solve between public elections.
  • Looks like Philadelphia is talking about making the entire city wireless [cnn.com] - that seems like the ulimimate online service!
    • If you can't offer it 'everywhere' you should at least offer wireless near the town hall. It will attract the 'right kind' of people to hang around the center of government and chat with their local officials. Most town halls have something of a 'park atmosphere' to them, with benches and trees on well-kept grounds, they also tend to be near schools, shopping centers, and commercial districts.

  • Online Tax/Property Search (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jaredmauch ( 633928 ) <jared@puck.nether.net> on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:35PM (#10155504) Homepage
    My local cities and townships have a nice resource for being able to view the online property and tax status information. This is all suff you could always view by going to the local offices, but it's available online both via the County [ewashtenaw.org] City [a2gov.org] and if you live out by me, the Township [twp.mi.us].

    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).

    • Contact your local Metropolitan Planning Organization for information on transportation projects. These organizations are designated by congress to distribute federal highway funds for local projects. They are required by law to provide public information and foster public involvement. I went ahead, and found the one for your area:
      http://www.miwats.org/
      Give 'em a ring. They're usually very nice.
    • Wow. I went to that site and entered 'Smith' as my only search key. Looks like a GREAT site for harvesting marketing information.

      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)

    by andreMA ( 643885 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:38PM (#10155520)
    Online reporting of defective streetlights and traffic control devices, with complaints appropriately routed.

    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.

  • A well crafted portal website for city events, linked news articles relating to happenings, construction notices (why are they tearing such and such street up for example), sex offender registry. A small forum with q&a. People submit questions and city officials answer them. Also, you'll want online feedback forms. Make it easy for people to suggest new ideas, report malfunctions (traffic light, street lights, potholes). Keep track of these things, and possibly publish them for everyone to see (people

    • Anonymous submissions to the sex offender registry (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Will get you sued. Society can only handle so much truth. I know from personal experience.

  • A few things... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shfted! ( 600189 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @11:46PM (#10155550) Journal

    There are many times a few things would be handy, especially for people new to town:

    • Community editable
      • Organisation listings (who's out there?)
      • Events calendar (what's there to do tonight?)
      • Directory of popular local sites (why should the webmaster do all the work...)
    • Hours of operation and contact info (including email contact) for all city services
    • Online payment of taxes and fees
    • A forum for debating local issues -- an easy way for council to keep a pulse on hot topics
    • Links to places offering employment opportunities
    • Climat information (hey, I'd want to know)
    • All bylaws (so you can look stuff up at any time)

    That's just stuff off the top of my head that I would like to see myself.

    • 'Community Editable' sounds interesting, possibly even amusing to observe in action.

      Sorry for seeing a bit cynical here...
      • I ran a community info site at one point. There was rarely any hassle, and most people treated it with a great deal of respect. Sadly, the site was no profitable (mainly because my boss wouldn't listen there was no ROI on what we were building...)

  • Traffic (Score:4, Interesting)

    by krazed ( 27525 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @12:04AM (#10155628)
    How about an online service that pulls data from traffic sensors?

    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.

  • As little as possible (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:04AM (#10156020)

    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.

  • regional announce e-mail lists (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @03:35AM (#10156257) Homepage
    It would be nice to be sent an e-reminder when the street cleaning day is, so that they don't keep towing my car. Plus contruction, street or area relevent to me, etc would be very nice... Like a community newsletter but in more convienient, relevant form, flitered for my personal location.
    • e-reminder when the street cleaning day is

      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.
  • My City council has a map of the city that can be zoomed in and out, and the streetnames are searchable. I find it very useful.

  • Map Everything Online (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 04, 2004 @10:25AM (#10157229)
    Milwaukee was one of the first cities to embrace GIS with any seriousness, and it shows. Their Map Milwaukee interface is quite practical, and quite cool:

    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 /instead of in person/ that would make it cheaper. Applications, questions, answers, information lookup, and all that.
    • Milwaukee was one of the first cities to embrace GIS with any seriousness, and it shows. Their Map Milwaukee interface is quite practical, and quite cool:
      Erm:
      Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01a8' Object required: 'oSelectedNode.selectSingleNode(...)' /display/includes/nwsCMS.asp, line 98
      :)

  • Maybe look inside? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Darth_Burrito ( 227272 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @11:05AM (#10157404)
    Consider looking inside the city's information systems. If my experience is any indicator, large decentralized organizations tend to be exceptionally bad at managing the flow of information amongst sub units.

    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.
    • And people who pay the taxes to support 'stable government jobs' love it when a few of those duffs can be fired because they're not needed any longer.

      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)

    by dan_bethe ( 134253 ) <slashdot&smuckola,org> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @11:36AM (#10157551)
    Salina, KS [salina-ks.gov] has all public city, county, and school board meetings televised on tv and streaming live and archived on the Internet [salnet.org]. Most of the city and county ordinances and other documentation is online. We have our Public Access Mapping (GIS) [66.210.12.106] database online. Almost all of our public nonprofits are online [salhelp.org] along with matching the public up with their corresponding resources and volunteer opportunities. Most of the big nonprofits have their own web sites with calendaring and everything else, far far too many to mention. Our whole public library [salpublib.org] catalog is online with renewals, reservations, and live shelf status.

    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)

    by psychosis ( 2579 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @11:59AM (#10157650)
    The Virginia DMV site is excellent (http://www.dmv.state.va.us [state.va.us]). Since VA has about 250 license plates (no exaggeration!), you can order them all online, including a preview of personalized plates. Also, license renewals, car registrations, tax payments, etc. can all be accomplished online (in firefox!) without trouble.
    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.

  • access, + access (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nusratt ( 751548 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @12:31PM (#10157777) Journal
    1. public wifi.
    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.
  • Depending on the size of the city, this may be infeasible, but in Fredericton, NB (50-60k people depending on whether school's in), the entire downtown core (depending on line-of-sight) is wirelessed for free internet access.

    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.
  • Really. Government bureaucracies just aren't an efficient way to provide most services. Most of my dealings with municipalities have been fraught with corruption and incompetence. Please don't do anything more "for" me. Please.
  • Houston offers a great push-based email newsletter for homeowners: a listing of all permits that were applied for, by zip code. Every couple of weeks, I get a listing of everybody that's applied to modify their house, build a new one, etc., near me, so I have a chance to protest if it's something horrendous. As a homeowner, it's great for protecting property values.
  • Here in Auckland, New Zealand, I can pay my parking tickets online http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/auckland/transport /parking/payonline.asp [aucklandcity.govt.nz]. Certainly not the most technologically advanced web-thing I've ever seen, but it's saved me a lot of time.
  • Most states list their laws online, so you can go look them up, but most cities don't list their's.

    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)

    by Beek ( 10414 )
    Look into the transit system, there's probably some cool projects to do there. At my City, the transit system has an online application that will determine bus routes for you. Everytime I use it, I think "man, this would have been the coolest project to work on." And it's a really useful app too!

    If you want to see it, www.winnipegtransit.com, it's called "Navigo"
  • It would be nice to be able to report a new pothole online.

    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)

    by smoon ( 16873 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @05:30AM (#10167307) Homepage
    As other posters have mentioned, the ability to report problems, e.g.: potholes, bad traffic signals, but also to request things like a stop sign at intersection X. This should be put into something akin to Bugzilla or RT and the actual follow-up and resolution kept open for review. Requests for new things should be added to council meetings agenda for review.

    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.
  • I'd like to know why this municipality is wasting money on hiring someone without a well defined job. No offense buddy, just that governments shouldn't have extra money to waste.

    • Who says he doesn't? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by The Rizz ( 1319 )
      Just because he has been asked for some input into possible future projects doesn't mean he doesn't have a well defined job.

      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

  • Q&A forum which could also be built into a series of (or single) FAQs and authoritativly answered by the appropriate dept. Also identify the dept. to relieve the main switchboards and give contact info for said dept. in the answer if more info is needed. Answers could be signed by their authors giving your noxious weed dept. a more personable image.

    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
  • Have all forms online, and submittable online.

    try and collect as many state forms too.
  • I'm a planner who works for the energy/environmental department of a ~100K person college town. One of the ideas that we've been batting around for a while now is to implement an online energy billing and tracking system with our local utility companies that can help people chose what appliances they might benefit from upgrading. Perhaps this has already been done, 'cause it seems like a fairly basic idea, but I haven't run across any municipalities doing it. I think it'd be very helpful for people to se
  • Make these available on-line, along with the option to receive them by email. At 37 cents per bill, just for the postage, the savings can add up. The same goes for Property Tax Statements, Water Quality Reports, Quarterly newletter etc.
  • What is on your wishlist for services you wish your own city would offer online?
    • Crime statistics/report data
    • Emergency Response (911) statictics/data
    • Code Enforcement/Nuisance Abatement statistics/case data
    • 911-Police-Code Enforcement Response/Administrative Expense data

    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

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