

City of SF now accepting complaints via Twitter - nixme
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/02/the-city-of-san-francisco-now-lets-you-submit-complaints-via-twitter/

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mnemonik
When dealing with the government, I always believed that emailing was the most
ineffective approach to being heard because emails are so easily ignored.
Voicing complaints via twitter is a sure fire way to let gov't officials know
that you don't care enough to actually do something about a given issue, like
go to a demonstration, and your complaint will not be taken seriously.

SF is just getting good publicity from being "more open" and using in vogue
technology, but they are actually making it easier to ignore people.

City of SF in the eyes of the public: +1

People's power to be heard: +0

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sili
They are not making it easier to ignore people per say, since they are not
closing older ways to contact them. Still, they are not making it harder
either. A good change would have been providing some way to follow-up and
track progress of a reported problem.

Effectiveness of a government service is not in how many different ways there
are to report a problem, but in how well it manages to fix it.

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antiismist
FTA: Once you submit a DM to @SF311, you will receive a service request
number. Apparently, there is a city staff member devoted to handling and
responding to @SF311 Tweets.

San Francisco is also using CoTweet, a Twitter business platform that acts
like a CRM, to manage and track these conversations. CoTweet’s platform
supports both marketing communication and response-driven customer support via
Twitter.

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sili
From their FAQ page, "When you click on "Follow 311," you will be taken to a
Twitter page to enter your Twitter ID and password." Can't they find a more
acceptable way to block spam and bots?

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patrickg-zill
Why? I mean, this is stupid... wouldn't you want more info about a problem
than 140 characters?

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cloudhead
Actually I probably wouldn't feel like typing more than that on my phone in
the middle of the street.. Maybe if you feel like writing an essay on
overflowing garbage it might feel a bit tight.

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nixme
Link to SFgov site about the service: <http://sftwitter.sfgov.org/twitter/>

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shalmanese
I feel civic pride in knowing the government is committed to fixing any
problem that can be expressed in 140 characters or less.

~~~
antiismist
Well, you can send a link to a picture there, it seems reasonable: "pothole @
345 Bryant Street <http://bit.ly/9879809>

