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Introducing myself

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  • From: Darren Warner

    Subject: Introducing myself

    Date: Dec 09, 2009 01:05 AM 

    Hi Philip and all,

A while back you wrote a little about yourself and invited others to do
likewise, so this seems as good a time as any to introduce myself...

I have worked in the private CRM sector developing applications for most
of my career, both as a programmer and a manager. Over the years I have
worked directly with customers on numerous medium-sized projects and
several large enterprise-wide applications (000's users). However I now
focus primarily on product development. I have a specific focus on CTI
but of course nowadays, multi-channel management is the norm.

I've been looking at 311 (or lack thereof) with interest over the last
year or so and see a lot of opportunity to improve the way in which
government interacts and provides services to its citizens. I've also
been an avid Linux user and supporter of F/OSS since the early Slackware
days, hence joining this forum.

So, moving on to a couple of questions I have...

I've read through some of the wiki documentation and your blog posts,
and my initial impression was that you are attempting to define an open
API that presumably could then be adhered to by any number of software
applications from various sources (possibly to improve integration
between various existing systems, or at least attempt to unify access
across various agencies). However, a recent post about a two tier
structure seems to imply you're also thinking of building an actual
implementation (possibly as an integration layer to existing systems).
Were my initial assumptions been wrong? I had already looked at a few of
the applications mentioned in the Open311 wiki (SeeClickFix to name but
one certainly is an interesting idea), and I've since looked at a few
more mentioned there. I'm just wondering where Open311.org, and thus
this discussion forum fit into the overall picture.

Looking forward to continuing discussions with yourself and the other
members of this mailing list...

-Darren
    Thread Outline:

  • From: Ben Berkowitz

    Subject: Re: Introducing myself

    Date: Dec 09, 2009 08:04 PM 

    Hey Darren,

The space has been a good place for us to gather ideas for SeeClickFix and
work collaboratively to create a standard for connecting to 311.

We've joined the conversation in hopes that people will want to build tools
that connect with and work in conjunction with SeeClickFix as a platform for
connecting citizens and their governments.

If you are thinking of building something in the space, we would love to
work with you.

-Ben Berkowitz
SeeClickFix
CEO




On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 1:05 AM, Darren Warner <darren.warner@...>wrote:

> Hi Philip and all,
>
> A while back you wrote a little about yourself and invited others to do
> likewise, so this seems as good a time as any to introduce myself...
>
> I have worked in the private CRM sector developing applications for most
> of my career, both as a programmer and a manager. Over the years I have
> worked directly with customers on numerous medium-sized projects and
> several large enterprise-wide applications (000's users). However I now
> focus primarily on product development. I have a specific focus on CTI
> but of course nowadays, multi-channel management is the norm.
>
> I've been looking at 311 (or lack thereof) with interest over the last
> year or so and see a lot of opportunity to improve the way in which
> government interacts and provides services to its citizens. I've also
> been an avid Linux user and supporter of F/OSS since the early Slackware
> days, hence joining this forum.
>
> So, moving on to a couple of questions I have...
>
> I've read through some of the wiki documentation and your blog posts,
> and my initial impression was that you are attempting to define an open
> API that presumably could then be adhered to by any number of software
> applications from various sources (possibly to improve integration
> between various existing systems, or at least attempt to unify access
> across various agencies). However, a recent post about a two tier
> structure seems to imply you're also thinking of building an actual
> implementation (possibly as an integration layer to existing systems).
> Were my initial assumptions been wrong? I had already looked at a few of
> the applications mentioned in the Open311 wiki (SeeClickFix to name but
> one certainly is an interesting idea), and I've since looked at a few
> more mentioned there. I'm just wondering where Open311.org, and thus
> this discussion forum fit into the overall picture.
>
> Looking forward to continuing discussions with yourself and the other
> members of this mailing list...
>
> -Darren
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Archive: http://lists.open311.org/discuss/archive/2009/12/1260338741383
> To unsubscribe send an email with subject "unsubscribe" to
> discuss@....  Please contact
> discuss-manager@... for questions.
>



-- 
Have you seen my new start-up for social good? SeeClickFix (
www.seeclickfix.com) Check it out and report an issue in your neighborhood.
Power to the Community.

twitter.com/benberkowitz
twitter.com/seeclickfix

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  • From: philipashlock

    Subject: Re: Introducing myself

    Date: Dec 15, 2009 02:58 PM 

    Hi Darren,

Sorry not to bet back to this sooner.

The main focus of this website is to serve as a forum for establishing 
standards and interoperability for 311 technology. The first goal is to 
work closely with cities and other entities that are opening up 311 
systems so that a standard Open311 API can be coordinated. Washington 
D.C., San Francisco, and SeeClickFix all have drafts of an open311 API, 
so this is a forum to help facilitate coordination between entities like 
those in an effort to achieve interoperability. Interoperability is 
helpful not only to simplify the offering of client-side citizen 
interfaces, but also to help unify and better coordinate inter-agency 
processes.

The idea of a two-tiered approach is to bridge the simple interface and 
approachable user experience of a service like FixMyStreet or 
SeeClickFix with a city's more complex data collection needs. If you 
look at DC's API <http://api.dc.gov/open311/v1>, you'll see that they 
provide a way to request the requirements for a specific service request 
(SR) type (eg meta_getTypeDefinition). I'm arguing that this should only 
be done after an initial SR is sent. I would define the initial 
submission as the core schema for a 311 service request. If the given 
API supports extensions for requesting additional data for a specific SR 
type, that can be done after the initial submission (either immediately 
afterward with the same user/interface, or at a later date by someone 
else).

There's a sketch of this proposed system architecture at: 
http://wiki.open311.org/Open311.org_Draft_Spec#System_Architecture

In order to make this work, there will be integration layers between 
this web API and existing CRM systems. These integration layers will be 
made available for other cities using the same CRM system. San Francisco 
uses Lagan and so does Boston. Both cities have an interest in sharing 
the approach to this integration and apparently Lagan has been 
supportive in this effort as well.

The other integration piece is providing a way to seamlessly integrate 
various applications with the distributed nature of this platform. Our 
approach to this is to follow the successful model of the web and create 
a system much like DNS: GeoWeb DNS <http://wiki.open311.org/GeoWeb_DNS>. 
This is something we are working on right now.

I'll plan to post to the blog with more information about these 
approaches, but I welcome feedback from all. I would like to coordinate 
some kind of conference call or way to get everyone on the same page on 
a regular schedule of once or twice a month. I'm still figuring out the 
best way to do this, but I'll send out an announcement about that as 
well and make sure that we have a clear coordinated roadmap going into 
2010.

Thanks for everyone's support and patience in this endeavor.

best,
Phil

Darren Warner wrote:
> Hi Philip and all,
>
> A while back you wrote a little about yourself and invited others to do
> likewise, so this seems as good a time as any to introduce myself...
>
> I have worked in the private CRM sector developing applications for most
> of my career, both as a programmer and a manager. Over the years I have
> worked directly with customers on numerous medium-sized projects and
> several large enterprise-wide applications (000's users). However I now
> focus primarily on product development. I have a specific focus on CTI
> but of course nowadays, multi-channel management is the norm.
>
> I've been looking at 311 (or lack thereof) with interest over the last
> year or so and see a lot of opportunity to improve the way in which
> government interacts and provides services to its citizens. I've also
> been an avid Linux user and supporter of F/OSS since the early Slackware
> days, hence joining this forum.
>
> So, moving on to a couple of questions I have...
>
> I've read through some of the wiki documentation and your blog posts,
> and my initial impression was that you are attempting to define an open
> API that presumably could then be adhered to by any number of software
> applications from various sources (possibly to improve integration
> between various existing systems, or at least attempt to unify access
> across various agencies). However, a recent post about a two tier
> structure seems to imply you're also thinking of building an actual
> implementation (possibly as an integration layer to existing systems).
> Were my initial assumptions been wrong? I had already looked at a few of
> the applications mentioned in the Open311 wiki (SeeClickFix to name but
> one certainly is an interesting idea), and I've since looked at a few
> more mentioned there. I'm just wondering where Open311.org, and thus
> this discussion forum fit into the overall picture.
>
> Looking forward to continuing discussions with yourself and the other
> members of this mailing list...
>
> -Darren
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Archive: http://lists.open311.org/discuss/archive/2009/12/1260338741383
> To unsubscribe send an email with subject "unsubscribe" to discuss@....  Please contact discuss-manager@... for questions.
>   

-- 
Philip Ashlock
The Open Planning Project - http://www.openplans.org
phil@... <mailto:phil@...> | @philipashlock 
<http://twitter.com/philipashlock> | (360) 389-2741

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