Cherryflava

Killer idea: MMS your way to a cleaner / safer Cape Town

Posted on 24. Jan, 2007 by Jonathan Cherry in Streetflava

On any given day, should you turn your radio dial to one Cape Talk…you’ll realise that there are a tonne of people who gladly give of their free time to passionately moan and whine about the ‘sorry’ state of things around the city of Cape Town.

Now imagine the local government could use that enthusiasm, and a touch of Web 2.0 tricks and tools, to effectively manage the city’s infrastructure.

In Lewisham, UK citizens are encouraged to send camera-phone pictures to
their local council to report stray garbage, unwanted grafitti, etc.

The local government of Amsterdam’s Geuzenveld
district just launched an online tool that lets people pinpoint
neighborhood problems on Google Maps. After filling out an online form,
a marker is placed on a Google map of the area, along with information on how the complaint is being dealt with.

Geuzenveld hopes residents will feel more involved now that
they’re actually able to track how their complaint is being followed
up, and that local maintenance crews will be motivated to keep the map
as empty as possible, solving close to 90% of all issues within 2 days.

In New York, the city’s 911 call centers will be able
to receive camera-phone pictures and videos taken by residents and
visitors, straight from the scene of a crime. 311
non-emergency call centers will be similarly equipped at a later stage,
allowing New Yorkers to document and photographically report on
‘quality of life problems’. [full story over at Springwise.com]

Cape Town has millions of cellphones, loads of complainers and a massive opportunity to use this idea to develop a management tool that uses the ‘new technology’ of crowd sourcing to help maintain the city. It really would be a crying shame if they had to ignore it.

Lovely.