Open311 is an initiative to enable local-level engagement: to involve people with the physical well being of their cities, by providing a platform for voicing issues and encouraging direct involvement in creating solutions.

Currently, 311 is a city interface, an access point for non-emergency services. Depending on the city, it can provide a wide range of tools and information. However, the core function is accepting and tracking municipal service requests.

In many ways 311 has already been a great success, so what needs to change?  Well, it’s still new and not all cities have decided to fully support or leverage it. 311 could be spread more easily and could have greater potential if built as a standardized platform with open data and an open api.

What’s the significance of open data? It allows for public participation, and even solving problems without government. This same social aspect has given the web it’s powerful momentum. It’s also true in our public spaces: how engaging would they be if they were experienced alone?

Until recently no city provided 311 like this, so it’s come from outside of government with sites like FixMyStreet in the UK and SeeClickFix in the US. Yet, just this summer, D.C. opened their 311 so that developers could plug directly into city data to create apps.

Open data also expands 311 by letting apps easily mash up data. For example, in New York there’s an app called Ride the City that calculates safe bike routes. What if this also considered safety hazards that came through 311 - since even big potholes can be lethal to cyclists.
With this graph from Jay Nath you see that D.C. already has a high demand for 311 data, with 130,000 downloads in seven months, and that was before the 311 API.  Over half of DC’s data catalog downloads come from crime and 311 alone.

Additionally, read/write API’s allow developers to focus on new innovations rather than replicating core services. With an open standard, this point is exponentially more significant since innovations would be interoperable and transferrable from city to city.

Everyone can build with the same platform letting new solutions evolve without reinventing the wheel. Software as a service can seamlessly coexist with software maintained within city government, and cities can use services without lock-in or inability to customize workflows.

At The Open Planning Project we’ve done R&D around citizen driven issue tracking for a few years and recently developed this as GeoTrac, a set of extensions on the open source Trac app. One extension is a rudimentary clone of the DC API.  What does it mean to clone an API? What did it mean for Compaq to clone IBM?

What does it mean to treat issues in a city the same way they’re treated with open source software? You leverage the open participatory model in a focused way and you open the feedback and improvement of the system to the whole community.

Again, if cities can provide open data and an open api, especially one built around an open standard, then it expands the capability of 311 technology to better focus on new workflows, new solutions, and issues unique to each city.

An example of this is a pilot program we’re doing in coordination with the New York City DOT to provide an interface for submitting & reviewing potential bike rack locations. While very simple, this workflow is designed to meet the DOT’s specific requirements.

Another example is creating live maps with real-time data. Live maps provide an engaging UI with a pulse, enable faster responses, and show patterns as they emerge. We were able to easily create a prototype of this thanks to existing open standards.

The main input for 311 is currently voice, but we are amidst a new era of telephony with VOIP, smart-phones, google voice, asterisk, and code-driven call centers in the cloud. We can now weave voice together with the innovations of the web.

Many of america’s foundations are similar to the principles of the web: the open platform and the participation. Roads, the internet, and GPS are all enabling platforms provided by government. Open 311 can build on these to enable more responsive, efficient, and livable cities.

Now, it’s easy to be called into action by emergency, by something that’s broken. While certainly unifying, reactionary measures don’t cover all opportunities for civic participation. So let’s consider what would be possible if we could call people to action around the development of new solutions.

Open 311 can be a platform for ongoing participation -- lowering the barrier of entry and creating new opportunities for collaboration between citizens and government.  There’s more than election day and tax day -- open 311 can power civic engagement everyday.
We have opportunities to experiment with the malleability of civic infrastructure. An example in New York is Summer Streets, radically changing the use-case of basic infrastructure. On September 20th is a city wide event called Conflux City that explores these opportunities. That’s when we’re launching the bike rack program.

We need your help establishing a standard and sharing knowledge between cities. With precedents like DC's  311 API and the Apps for Democracy, we have excellent case studies, but we need more cities to be involved. So, we’re planning a summit for next month. Watch the website and join the mailing list for more info.`