FixOurCity is a site to help people report, view,
or discuss local problems they’ve found to their local division or ward by
easily submitting a report. It was launched in mid May 2009. Below is a quick video about the site.
Can you give me some examples?
Sure. Uncollected garbage, broken or unlit lampposts, stray dog menace;
anything like that that could be usefully reported to your division or ward to be fixed.
How do I use the site?
After entering an area name and street name, you are presented
with the latest problems reported in that area on a map. If the problem you are concerned about
is new, you can file a new report or bump an existing problem to higher priority.
How are the problems solved?
They are reported to the relevant corporation division by email. The
division can then resolve the problem the way they normally would.
Alternatively, you can discuss the problem on the website with others, and
then together lobby the division to fix it, or fix it directly yourselves.
Is it free?
The site is free to use, yes. FixOurCity is run
by eMoksha.org, an organization dedicated to promote strong democracies through increased
citizen awareness and engagement. If you like what we do and want to make a contribution
please contact us at donations@emoksha.org.
Practical Questions
I'm from a division, where do you send the reports?
You can either leave a test report or contact us
to find out where reports go at the moment. Also contact us
to update the address or addresses we use.
Do you remove silly or illegal content?
We reserve the right to remove any problems or updates which we consider to be inappropriate.
Do you have any publicity material?
Sure. Please contact us and we can mail you an array of posters and flyers.
Privacy Questions
Who gets to see my email address?
If you submit a problem, we pass on your details, and details
of the problem, to the division contact or contacts responsible for the
area where you located the problem. Your name is displayed upon the
site if you let us, but not your email address; similarly with updates. We will
never give or sell your email address to anyone else, unless we are
obliged to by law.
Will you send spam to my email address?
Never. We will email you if someone leaves an update on a
problem you’ve reported, and send you a questionnaire email four weeks
after you submit a problem, asking for a status update; we’ll only ever
send you emails in relation to your problem.
Yes, we can use help in all sorts of ways, technical or
non-technical. Please see our franchise and jobs pages.
Where’s the "source code" to this site?
The software behind this site is open source, and available
to you mainly under the GNU Affero GPL software license. You can download the
source code (look under ‘bci’) and help us develop it.
You’re welcome to use it in your own projects, although you must also
make available the source code to any such projects.
People build things, not organisations. Who actually built it?
Shanmugam Sriraman and Selvam Velmurugan adapted the open-source framework by Matthew Somerville and Francis Irving
(from mySociety.org) for FixOurCity. Elango Subramanian helped with project
co-ordination and Saahithi Nidamarthi helped with the website design (and the cool video). Thanks also to the entire free software
community (this particular project was made possible by Ubuntu, Perl, and PostgreSQL).
Let us know if we’ve missed anyone.