Angry Citizen

It would be nice to turn the phone into a magic wand endowed with unlimited power. Every self-respecting corporation is now doing projects on augmented reality - but nokia city lens and goolge glass in fact only display clues to objects.



And what if we can change our environment with one click on our smartphone? It was in the summer that our project “ Angry Citizen ” was born - you see the communal problem, take a picture of it on the phone and ... everything, it is automatically solved by itself within the time limit established by law.

')

When we launched the project this summer, everything sounded suspiciously simple:

1. The user takes a photo and adds a description.
2. The program on the smartphone determines its address and sends the data to us on the server
3. According to the description, the server determines the type of the problem and finds the responsible organization by geotag.
4. Using the user's data, the necessary statements are sent on behalf of the user.
5. If the problem is not solved, additional pressure is put on it - through social networks, the media, volunteering, crowdfunding and even the involvement of lawyers.
6. The user is notified that the problem has been resolved.

In practice, it turned out that automating the whole process is much more difficult. The simplest thing is to make a generator of statements, like fine rozhzhkh, for example. But IMHO this is not enough. Yes, of course, according to the law, all violations should be corrected within 30 days, but this is each violation, take a photo, describe, send a complaint and, in general, work instead of the management company. It's a shame if it takes all the energy and enthusiasm of the user.



Therefore, we immediately decided to make complaints only as an excuse for activism - we need to change the situation itself to such an extent that the utilities would understand that it would be better for them not to mow, otherwise the consequences would be much further than a single complaint. And from housing and communal services you can go to other urban issues, such as late buses or planting trees in the yard.



For this, services are provided in the service, such as collecting signatures or crowdfunding - while they are poorly automated and for the most part they only tell how the user organizes neighbors, but in the future all this will work by itself, up to the creation of a VKontakte group and inviting everyone nearby to it users.







Over the past six months, we have not gotten out of the beta test, but it seems the project has already earned and lives its own life - there are more than 1000 problems on the site, half of which are in the process of being solved. The problems are very different - from dumps in yards and holes on the roads to the provision of poor-quality medical services and bureaucracy of officials. And just last week we were joined by 220 people, of which 34 are lawyers.



In November, we finished the opportunity to register via Odnoklassniki and Twitter. And finally, they made notifications about the solution of problems through SMS.



The project was supported by two runet media giants: the Civil Journalism Agency “Reedus” and the “Big City” magazine . Now they have special rubrics where the most insane problems from our site will be published every week.



At the end of November, the Deputies Inquiries tool appeared, where according to their problems the user can send an application to deputies registered on the site, asking them to send a request from them when the problem is not solved by other means (for example, by direct appeals to relevant departments). Any deputy can register on the site. Request to the user helps to make our lawyer.



The Problem in Focus tool - a project lawyer chooses acute problems and brings them to the end for the user if he cannot solve the problem himself. You can also get advice on your problem from the lawyers of the project and registered on the website through the Lawyer's Consultation tool.



The site is quite large and complex, although it is written using conventional technologies in two languages: php, mysql. We have developed a whole logical chain: algorithms, cases and tools, and shifted the solution of problems to IT tools - this is a novelty.







Algorithms for solving problems are now being written by the site team and involved experts, and in the future we plan to involve the community and build a mechanism for preparing algorithms based on the principle of crowdsourcing - that is, it is such social engineering.



Now we are working in the Moscow region, but we plan to gradually expand. But all the algorithms for applying to federal bodies can already work for cases from anywhere in Russia.



Simply put, it’s time to withdraw the project from the beta test stage, and there’s nowhere without you, dear Habr. Surely each of you has a dirty entrance, illegal advertising, a pit on the road or other problems - do not be lazy to spend 10 minutes and upload them to the site - surely you will have several suggestions in this process on how to improve our project.