By Jason Kiesel, co-founder and CEO of CitySourced

In the midst of an unstable global economy, governments are striving to accomplish more with fewer resources. Additionally, citizens are looking for governments to embrace the government 2.0 movement, encouraging increased communication, feedback, and transparency of allocated resources. It is a lofty goal, but one that we feel will increase the effectiveness of government while concurrently improving citizens' quality of life.

Mobile Apps for Public Works

CitySourced is a real time mobile civic engagement platform; with our free mobile apps, we allow citizens to report non-emergency issues back to City Hall. By identifying these civic issues (public safety, quality of life, environmental issues, etc.) with a smartphone, citizens are able to snap a photo, shoot video or record audio and easily report issues directly to the city's appropriate department. In addition, our mobile reports provide additional data points about the problem, most specifically the GPS location. From these reports, the city can then respond directly to the user to keep citizens informed of all relevant progress.

Admittedly, the interaction is at a very basic level, but it empowers citizens to take an active role in their community. Many of us have personally experienced or have been witness to the frustration associated with public works problems. Maybe it's a pothole that wreaks havoc on our car, or piling snow mounds that hinder our ability to enter the subway station; these issues, while passing, are omnipresent in our lives. What if instead of complaining around the water cooler with coworkers, you could initiate obvious change based on your actions. We believe these small, tangible actions and positive feedback can lead to the reengaging of people at the community level.

                                      A CitySourced user reports danger on Manhattan's 10th Avenue

CitySourced Beginnings

Conceptualized in November 2006, FreedomSpeaks.com was eventually launched in March 2008 as non-partisan political social network that allowed its members to quickly and easily write letters to their publicly elected officials. In the summer of 2009, our team created the original CitySourced mobile application. Very shortly afterwards, in September 2009, we officially launched the CitySourced product at the 2009 TechCrunch50. Fortunately, we’re able to work with some great partners — such as Microsoft, IBM, and ESRI — who have helped us tremendously along the way.

CrowdSourcing the Public Sector

Between Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and many others, crowdsourcing has delivered some amazing solutions; we want to apply the same magic to the public sector. We think we're pretty unique in applying this model to the public and encouraging civic engagement. While we currently focus on public works issues, our vision is to ultimately transform civic engagement. By energizing citizens around public issues, we hope to further connections between the two groups. That's our hope.

In 2010, the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) of Washoe County, Nevada, and Fehr & Peers transportation consultants teamed up to begin work to create the Reno Sparks Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan. In addition to public meetings, the team decided to find new ways to generate public comments. The CitySourced app provided both an online web map and smartphone application that allowed people in Washoe County and the cities of Reno and Sparks to submit geo-referenced electronic comments. By utilizing this technology, public feedback was no longer confined to in-person meetings at very specific, scheduled times. Removing these limitations reduced the friction required by citizens to participate and applied the crowdsourcing model to city planning. In addition, the city was able to gather much richer, location-specific data without hiring additional workers.

CrowdSourcing Drives Our Development

From our early beginnings, we have focused relentlessly on developing our app for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows 7. While that may seem like technical issue to most, to us it is core to our offering. We realize that we have to be accessible across as many different platforms as possible if we want to include everyone in our crowdsourcing efforts. Mobile development on so many different platforms and devices can cause a headache, but it's super important for us to be as open and accessible as possible.

Jason Kiesel is co-founder and CEO of CitySourced. Prior to launching CitySourced, Kiesel operated Kiesel Media Group, a web development company that architected and developed CommerceComposer, a highly scalable e-commerce platform. Additionally, he has been hired as a software engineering consultant for Fortune 500 companies such as MySpace, Disney, Transamerica, & Universal.