Report Platform

Report platform provides citizens a map-based portal to send specific fixing issues to the responsible departments or individuals. When building the portal, it is essential to link certain types of complaints to the responsible person in the city organization. Typically, the platform sends response to the user within a certain time limit about how the issue can/cannot be solved.

Basic Information on the Method
Mode of communication
Online
Group size
31 and more
Geographical scale
Public space, Neighbourhood, City
Skills required
Basic, Average
Resources needed
Medium, High
Level of Involvement
Level of involvement
Consult
Type of knowledge enabled
Divergence (Broad public)
Additional Criteria
Planning phase
Initiatiion, Implementation, Evaluation & Research, Maintenance
Methodological approach
Diagnostic, Organisational

How to use the method

Platform selection/establishment

There are several free/commercial websites and platforms providing the similar service. The report platform should be map-based, which allows users to locate the reported issues. Some platforms allow users to report not only the issues need to be fixed, but also the places they find satisfying and should be preserved, and users can also provide their own solutions. In addition to these third-party platforms/websites, local government or public administration can also provide a portal (an email adress or a link on the project website) to citizens to report issues. Issue reports should be directed to the responsible persons, therefore the platform should have certain categories of issues for selection and the responsible persons named for each category.

Reports collection & responds

Participants’ reports will be sent to responsible persons/departments, then the responsibles will act on the reported issues. Whether the issues will be fixed or not, the responsibles should reply the participants about how the it will be fixed or why it will be remained. Therefore, participants are usually asked for their email address or other contact detail.

What are the outcomes

  • Improvement of living environment.
  • Improvement of residents’ satisfaction.
  • Innovative solution from citizens.

Skills required

Skills: basic, average

  • Skills to state a issue clearly
  • Skills to propose a solution
  • Skills to locate the issue on digital map

Resources needed

Resources: medium, high

  • Resources to access and maintain the platform
  • Resources to link the responsible persons to the specific issues
  • Reply to all the issues reports and explain the situation in time

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths
  • Respond promptly
  • Connecting citizens and their local council
  • Mobility, allowing participants to report while on spot with mobile devices
Weaknesses
  • Usually it is used for repairing existing problmes instead of preventing new issues to emerge

Use cases

FixaMinGata

FixaMinGata is a Swedish version of FixMyStreet launched by nine Swedish municipalities with a mere 35000-euro budget in 2013. The service makes reporting problems far more efficient comparing to their former report system.[1]

 

Try one of these tools & resources

References
  1. [1] https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/news/fix-my-street-proves-benefit
  2. Consoli, S., Reforgiato Recupero, D., Mongiovì, M., Presutti, V., Cataldi, G., & Patatu, W. (2015, May). An urban issues reporting and management platform for smart cities. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web (pp. 535-540).
  3. King, S. F., & Brown, P. (2007, December). Fix my street or else: using the internet to voice local public service concerns. In Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Theory and practice of electronic governance (pp. 72-80).
  4. FixMyStreet https://www.fixmystreet.com/faq