Data, Dayton and developing our City 2.0

When I first ran for Mayor, I talked about an ombudsman who would enter all complaints into a central database and then we’d evaluate how well we closed the issues. Each and every week.

Now, with the internet, mobile apps, and all kinds of social media, we can develop a web enabled system of tracking and prioritizing our issues.

I’m not the only one thinking about this, but, while so many of our other politicians are still talking about “economic development” and “land banking” I want to be talking about how we build the city of the future- and that doesn’t just mean faster internet pipes or wi-fi. From the site DIYCITY.org

Our cities today are relics from a time before the Internet. Services and infrastructure, created and operated by the government, are centrally managed, non-participatory and closed. And while this was once the best (and only) way for cities to operate, today it leads to a system that is inefficient, increasingly expensive to maintain, and slow to change.

What is needed right now is a new type of city: a city that is like the Internet in its openness, participation, distributed nature and rapid, organic evolution – a city that is not centrally operated, but that is created, operated and improved upon by all – a DIY City.

This is the DIYcity Challenge: can we, working together, define and build a version 1.0 of the Do-It-Yourself City, a city that operates on open data flowing through decentralized, open source tools, that actively engages residents not only as users but as participants and owners of the system?

Can we build this not only for our own individual cities, but for cities everywhere? Can we build an open toolset that any city, anywhere in the world, can access, modify to suit their needs, and deploy on their own terms?

via DIYcity.

And then take a look at the application CitySourced– and it’s overly long video Sorry about the autoplay:

CitySourced claims:

CitySourced is a real time mobile civic engagement tool. CitySourced provides a free, simple, and intuitive tool empowering citizens to identify civil issues (potholes, graffiti, trash, snow removal, etc.) and report them to city hall for quick resolution; an opportunity for government to use technology to save money and improve accountability to those they govern; and a positive, collaborative platform for real action. Our platform is called CitySourced, as it empowers everyday citizens to use their smart phones to make their cities a better place. CitySourced is powered by FreedomSpeaks, the leader in interactive civic engagement.

Hmmm, makes our old priority board system seem antiquated and overly complicated, doesn’t it.

If we’re looking to say Dayton is changing, and leading the way to creating Dayton 2.o with things like www.bcycle.com and tools like this, we may actually start seeing some people believe in Dayton and move here.

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