8. “The app proposes a new kind of
more productive communication
between the two groups that moves
past angry and frustrated citizens on
one end, and a paralyzed city on the
other.”
-Fast Company Exist
29. Government IT Market
• Comparatively, the
government IT market is
the largest technology
market
• Over 50x bigger than
iPhone apps
• Over 10x bigger than the
video games industry
• Largely undisrupted, held
by old vendors
• Governments want a
change
To try to get a handle on this problem, the City of New Orleans implemented an open data portal and began posting information about the blight process there, in an effort to provide better answers to these questions, which was a fantastic step in the right direction.
However, data portals like Socrata present data as dense spreadsheets, organized according to internal processes or departments, so for the average citizen, it was still easier for them to call or email someone they knew inside City Hall than to try to navigate New Orleans’ data portal, which meant city staffers were still losing precious time and resources even after the City had made a significant investment in another system.
It was clear to us that our best chance to help close this information gap was to take a user-centered approach, to make information about blighted properties not just publicly available, but to provide it in a simple format that makes sense to citizens.
This steady population loss has left many homes abandoned and neglected.
These blighted properties have an extremely negative effect on the surrounding community by attracting crime and lowering neighboring property values, which has motivated citizens to get involved in the fight against blight.
However, to have a real impact, citizens need to know what the City is currently doing to fight blight, to help them identify opportunities to get involved.
The tool we’ve created this year is called BlightStatus, and it presents citizens with a simple interface that allows them to search for problem properties they care about by address or on a map...
Users can also get a birds-eye view of blight across the city by browsing the map, and using filters to hone in on the specific area or topic that is most important to them. We anticipate this feature being useful not just for citizens, but for city planning purposes as well.