About Social Media Today
By Gail Thomas-Flynn, Microsoft US State & Local Government Vice President
Today, Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel visited Microsoft's Chicago offices to discuss how his incoming administration plans to increase transparency by publishing more city data online. During his visit, the Mayor-elect held a press conference that provided a preview of his open government agenda. He also led an interesting dialogue on some of the great ideas submitted by Chicagoans to his website and proposed further technology initiatives that City Hall plans to take to engage citizens and make citizen services more efficient and effective.
One important step that the Mayor-elect specifically touched on is opening Chicago’s 311 system to the public:
"Today, we can make our 311 system work even better by making its data available to all citizens in real time. Anyone will be able to use a mobile device or computer to report a problem and send in an accompanying photo, and the information will be available to the public as well as to the relevant government authority. Anyone will be able to contribute more information about the problem. Citizens will be empowered to monitor trends in complaints and communicate about them with the City and with each other."
We’re excited about working with Mayor-elect Emanuel and elected officials across the country to help cities and counties of all sizes utilize the right technologies to make open government and transparency a reality at the local level. One great example of this is HeyGov!, an Open311-based cloud offering from Microsoft Partner ISC, which allows citizens a new way to submit and track service requests to a city’s 311 department via smart phone, Twitter, or online—all in real-time. And today Mayor-elect Emanuel had the opportunity to test drive HeyGov! and see how Chicagoans can benefit from this and similar Gov 2.0 technologies.
For more information about the Mayor-elect’s visit and upcoming plans for Chicago, check out his blog post here.
