Archives for category: General

FixMyStreet.ca Update

August 22, 09 //
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It’s been a while since my last post, so i thought I would provide an update at where we are with some of our projects.

Fixit Ottawa
After FixitOttawa was open-sourced under the Affero GPL last fall , VisibleGovernment.ca ran with the project and ported things from PHP to Django which is now running on the official FixMyStreet.ca site.

New Cities on Board
In the past several months, we’ve seen prince Edward Island, Montreal come on board at FixMyStreet.ca. Hamilton is in the works and I have heard some rumblings of a Halifax-specific release. If you’re interested in getting your municipality involved, get in touch and we can share what has worked for others getting their own cities on board. See here for more details.

iPhone App
I’ve been doing some work on an iPhone App that should be ready to go this fall. The app will allow you to take a geo-tagged photo, select a category, subject, and description, and send your report directly to the appropriate supported city via FixMyStreet.ca. If you’re a seasoned iPhone developer, we could always do with some help. Get in touch if you’re interested.

Calls for Open Data in Ottawa
We’ve seen some exciting progress in Canadian cities this year with Toronto, Vancouver, Nanaimo, among others, either start providing raw data to their citizens, or having committed to doing so by the end of the year.  If anyone is aware of anyone working on a draft a motion for the City of Ottawa in the regard, I’d love to get in touch and help get the motion the attention it deserves, and if not, I’d be happy to help lead the charge. Also, please help us compile a ranked list of datasets you’d like to see the City provide by posting and voting up your suggestions here.

*As a side note, some interesting data is now available via the Interactive Traffic map site, including NCC bike trail polygons, parking lots, traffic cameras and signs, and incident data.

Government 2.0 with Metronauts

June 25, 08 //
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When I was at Mesh ‘08, I had the chance to catch Mark Kuznicki and Sean Howard’s presentation detailing the progress they had made in developing a new way to do public consultations with Metrolinks utilizing a series of unconferences called “Transit Camps” with associated website and branding. I’ve written about the session previously on my blog, but wanted to capture it here as well. You can see the slidedeck below. We’ll be following the progress of the Metronauts closely. It’s something that I think would really work well in tandem with the current online public consultation process (can’t find a link at the moment) for Ottawa’s new Transit plan.

SlideShare | View | Upload your own

Mayor’s Taskforce Report on E-Government

June 25, 08 //
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The Mayor’s Taskforce on E-Government report was recently made public and posted on an Igloo-powered social network at http://ottawa.taskforcereport.ca/.  If you haven’t read through it yet, I would encourage you to do so and provide your comments. A number of the ideas and examples highlighted in the report could easily be taken on by the community.

It was nice to see that they highlighted a map-based problem reporting tool that exist in several other jurisdictions; something I’ve been working at in some of my spare time over a few weekends. FixIt Ottawa should be out soon as soon as I hear back from the City (ironically enough) on getting some ward boundary polygons. You can grab a copy a copy of the report here.