Case Summary

A wiki site created by My Society in order to help resolve physical problems needing to be fixed in communities within the United Kingdom. Problems, some of which include landscaping, rubbish and street lighting are reported on the site and are then emailed by the website to the corresponding town council.

Business Challenge

Fix My Street was created by an organization titled My Society in order to provide a service that would benefit individual communities and to help teach people how the internet can be used to improve our lives. The slow process of reporting problems that can be physically fixed to your local area council and waiting for them to fix it prompted the creation of the site, making the overall process more efficient.

Approach Taken

Fix My Street is a wiki that allows you to report physical problems within your local community; these reports are then emailed to the appropriate town council by the administrators of the site. The website is specifically for areas within the United Kingdom. In order to report the problem you must first reference where the problem is located. A postcode, street name or town is first entered and then a map appears which allows you to click on the exact location of your problem. After locating the problem, you're able to write a detailed description and add a picture of the problem. Problems are broken down into categories of which the town council is responsible to maintain or upkeep (landscaping, rubbish, abandoned vehicles etc...).

You're required to enter your email address which is shown to the administrators only and the posting of your name in connection with the problem is optional. There are also options to be kept updated through email on an individual problem or on problems affecting your local community. A offensive or unsuitable problem that is posted can be reported to the team running the website by another user.

The all reports tab on the top of the page lists each council alphabetically and categorizes the reports into new problems, old problems, old problems whose current state is unknown, recently fixed problems and old problems that have now been fixed. Updates about the problem can be posted underneath, when a problem is fixed the update sometimes includes a reference number for the incident from the council.

Results Achieved

There have been currently 275 reports posted within the past week.

577 reports have been fixed in the past month

There have been 15,952 updates on reports.

The United Kingdom Government has found Fix My Street to be so useful and innovative that they've held it as a paragon for web 2.0 citizen to government relationships. The reference is made in an article about a nationwide competition for a mashup, allowing the immense amount of data stored by the UK government to be useful/helpful.

Lessons Learned

The lesson learned is that the internet can serve as an important tool in linking citizens to their communities in order to resolve local issues. The wiki made this linking process between citizens and councils more efficient and served as a great place for a central location about town ordinance issues and to get updated information about problems that interest you.