As you may havenoticed, SeeClickFix recently launched a partnership with OaklandCalifornia. It’s been great working witheveryone at the city throughout the entire process, and we genuinely appreciatehow energetic they are about the opportunities presented by more transparentand accessible government. From ourperspective, this has been a great example of a mutually beneficialpartnership.
Additionally,they’ve been all over SeeClickFix, acknowledging and closing issues withindays, sometimes even hours. Oakland hasa reputation for being somewhat of a scrappy town, and the city administratorsare exemplifying this in the best way in how aggressively they are respondingto the concerns of their citizens. Forinstance, it took less than three days for illegal dumping, reported in Issue # 160661, to be handled, and the pothole that was reported in Issue # 161401 wasacknowledged in less than 24 hours. That is what we call responsivegovernance.
The mostencouraging piece of all of this has been the enthusiastic interest andinvolvement of Oakland’s citizens. Sincewe rolled out this partnership just a few weeks ago, we’ve seen spikes in useractivity that have lead us to believe the people of Oaktown are ready to engagewith their government in a new way. As the director of Public Works explained,“This tool allows every person in Oakland to become the eyes and ears of theCity.” It certainly seems like they’veembraced this role.
The people ofOakland may be frustrated that Brad Pitt was snubbed at the Oscars for hisperformance as A’s General Manager Billy Beane, and having the Raiders miss theplayoffs after trading away all of those draft picks probably still stings formany. However, the collaborative synergybeing created by citizens, SeeClickFix, and the Oakland government is givingeveryone a lot to be excited about in the Bay Area.
