User:Misterpickle/Citysourced

Citysourced is a mobile phone software application that allows citizens to report issues to municipal services. The services it aids in reporting include such things as: abandoned bicycles or vehicles, animal services, graffiti removal, homeless encampment or nuisances, municipal waste nuisances or violations, issues that involve the public right of way (including parking violations and tree removal), yard waste removal, building code enforcement, noise complaint, and property violations. (5) Currently, the application works in 1,900 U.S. cities with a Mobile City Hall feature that sends a basic report to city officials. San Jose, CA launched the service on December 12th, 2009 as the official mobile platform of San Jose. The service included additional features like analytical tools, municipal service specific report routing, and automatic updating of report status(8).

Technical Details
Citysourced currently works on the Apple iPhone, the BlackBerry, and on the Google Android software platform. (9) Future developments include the Palm WebOS platform. (3) On all the mobile devices, the process works the same. Using the mobile device, a picture is taken of the issue in question. Then the application "detects your location via GPS", approves the photo, (3) and geotags (2) it using Microsoft Bing's mapping system. (13) Then the user selects the issue category, add comments, and may additionally send the report through Twitter(3). Once filed, the report is bundled into a PDF file and sent to the district's city council member(5). City officials then have backend Citysourced software for prioritizing reports and mapping where the reports were located. (3)

Business Details
Citysourced, a product of Freedomspeaks, was was founded in August 2009 by Jason Kiesel (Founder and Chief Architect) and Kurt Daradics (co-founder and social catalyst). (http://www.crunchbase.com/search?query=citysourced) David Kralik (Chief Marketing Officer) said the goal is to eliminate "problems and possibly [cut] down on crime that comes as a result of that." (9) As with other Gov 2.0 initiatives, their intent is to "[s]hift the burden of identifying problems a little bit to the citizenry..." (9)   While the service is free for citizens, revenue comes from software and support services for individual cities. (The San Jose project was under a charter, which cost $4,500 for software development).