Watch:
A new, innovative application that will allow people to report minor problems with city infrastructures directly to city authorities, through their smart phones, is going to be launched soon in Philadelphia. The new application, called Philly311, will allow city-dwellers to report problems like potholes on the road, trashy blocks and broken streetlights.
The city’s noemergency call centre receives a million calls each year. The new application is expected to significantly lighten the load of the nonemergency call centre as well as encourage participation proactively in the reporting of these small but significant problems. When the application will be ready and fully deployed, users will be able to download it for free, submit a request, take a picture and attach that. Then, the user is able to follow through, follow on his request and receive notification that it is being handled by the city.
Similar applications are already in use in other cities. Significantly, the cost to the city for creating the application and putting it to use will be under $20,000! The idea is not recent, as the city of Philadelphia has been trying to create a phone application of this kind for two years. One such application for Blackberries was in use last year, but the city’s plan was for the application to have the broadest possible impact and be available for use by all modern mobile devices.
The original article can be found here.