ReportIt
ReportIt was developed by three Swarthmore students to help citizens communicate directly with people in power. It utilizes the power of the crowd to give citizens and their communities a stronger, more public voice.
We chose to make a Web app because of its broad accessibility. Not everyone has a cell phone, but with initiatives like Internet.org, internet access is quickly becoming a global reality. To allow for technological variation, users can submit reports online, via smartphone, or by SMS text messaging. The online platform allows people to report breakdowns in infrastructure and public services, information on disaster relief, corruption, and other issues. All submitted complaints are categorized and mapped using the Google Maps API so that people can easily see what problems are common in their city or region, even if their country does not have a widely used address system. This allows people to see what kinds of services are needed in the region and how they can help, as well as to help them hold their public officials accountable.
We offer an interactive administrator dashboard to help officials see what problems are trending in their region and to help them communicate directly with citizens. There is also a community user dashboard to enable community members to communicate with officials and each other and to further allow easy mobilization to solve problems.
Built by Razi Shaban (@rrshaban), Sedinam Worlanyo (@sedinam), and Amy Han (@raizel17).
ReportIt is built with Flask, SQLite3, Jinja2, gmaps.js, jQuery, and (regretfully) Bootstrap.