FixMyStreet Canada helping make Ottawa a better place

I recently discovered the OpenOttawa blog from Chris who created a site to help make Ottawa a better city.

The idea behind OpenOttawa.org is that there’s lots of ways for people to help out in [their] community doing things like Spring Cleaning the Capital, or planting trees, but there’s no easy way for the code monkeys to give back. The goal of OpenOttawa.org is to fill this void by providing web applications and online services to the betterment of the citizens of Ottawa. Much like the inspiration for OpenOttawa.org, the UK’s mySociety.org, OpenOttawa.org has two missions. The first is to be a volunteer project which builds websites that gives people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. The second is to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to most efficiently use the internet to improve lives.

Ottawa is now part of FixMyStreet where anyone can report problems that need fixing around the city and check out what's been fixed. There's a pretty neat map that shows where something needs to be fixed. Right now graffiti are the most popular problem. I'm definitely going to add to it and probably post my findings on MOOT as well. There's also another interesting site listing data-sets people would like to see the City provide. You can sign up and vote for certain data to be available to the public such as "Politician: Voting records","Road/Street closings/conditions","Realtime pollution data" or adding some of your own. I think this is a really great initiative. The best way to make positive changes is to actually doing something. Make sure you contribute to making your city a better place.