Seattle’s Government 2.0 Rewards Strong DIY Ethic

It started innocently enough, with the Pothole Rangers’ online form. See a pothole, report it online, and BLAMMO! pothole filled. If you’ve tried it, you know the weird feeling of power when it actually works, and a few days later there’s fresh asphalt where once there was only hole.

But as the streets decay, that power becomes responsibility. Every pothole adds itself to a to-do list. Your to-do list. You look around. Is anyone else seeing something and saying something? And then, grouchily, you wonder if it’s anyone’s job at all anymore, at the City, to check for potholes.

With this perspective in mind, you may or may not be all that thrilled to learn that you can now also report malfunctioning street lights online, or report certain crimes (Property Destruction, Car Prowls, Auto Accessories, Theft of Property under $500, and Identity Theft).

The crime has to have happened in Seattle city limits, not be an emergency, and not come with known suspects. (If it’s an emergency, you call 911, of course. If the crime is of another variety and not an emergency, you call 206-625-5011.) There are no rules for ratting out a street light–but helpfully, the map tells you if City Light is already working on the problem.

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Government 2.0 was part of Mayor McGinn’s campaign, and you can’t say he hasn’t followed through on it. Besides the emphasis on online reporting options, the City has also created Data.Seattle.Gov, a repository of datasets. The most highly ranked are active building permits and the location of city-maintained toilets, and crime statistics and a real-time 911 feed are there as well. Go ahead, browse. Here’s Seattle’s designated public fishing holes.

As it turns out, the plan from last September–”doing more with less,” “democratizing data,” and “revolutionizing community engagement” with the power of Seattle’s “collective IQ”–is pretty much what we’re seeing occur, if slowly, and with an emphasis of the “doing more with less” part. Who knew that civic engagement would be redefined as a proficiency with filling in online text boxes?