Transparency is the word du jour and politicians across our state continue to work feverishly to create systems for increasing government openness. But I recently read about a new mechanism that is firmly in the hands of the state’s citizens and that calls on our public officials, and invigorates our communities, to take action. It’s a web-based solution created by two New Haven residents called SeeClickFix.com and was recently written about in an article in the Hartford Courant - http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-see-click-fix-0504.artmay04,0,6557229.story
The website provides a forum for people to post non-emergency complaints about their cities, with photos and video as evidence, and then email their public officials seeking redress. Pot holes, broken playground equipment, piles of garbage, drug deals and abandoned buildings are all compiled and protested. Once an issue has been resolved, it is noted on the site. Sometimes the resolution comes from the city officials who, after being notified again and again by the participants of SeeClickFix, finally take action and sometimes it is a group of citizens themselves who fix the problem. But it is truly a perfect example of technology being used by citizens to shine a light on the problems of society – those things that might not rise to the urgency of police attention but that do impact daily life. By raising the awareness of these problems and bringing it to the attention of our public officials in this way, SeeClickFix has brought a new tool to the transparency arsenal.
