{"id":31,"date":"2013-03-13T12:55:51","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T16:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/leon-county-florida-trouble-ticket-system.html"},"modified":"2013-03-13T12:55:51","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T16:55:51","slug":"leon-county-florida-trouble-ticket-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/leon-county-florida-trouble-ticket-system.html","title":{"rendered":"Leon County Florida trouble ticket system"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n
\n\"Report<\/a>
\nWhy do citizens have to nag our local governments to find out what's
\ngoing on even about
\n
\ncleaning up sewage all over their back yards and under their houses<\/a>?
\nHow about if our governments deploy issue tracking systems?
\nHere's an example of how that works.\n<\/p>\n

\nAs previously mentioned<\/a>,
\nLeon County, Florida, lets anyone
\n
\nReport a Problem or Request a Service<\/a>
\nthrough their web page.
\n
\n\"Find<\/a>
\nThen you can
\n
\nfind your service request<\/a>
\nand
\n
\ntrack a problem<\/a>
\nusing a ticket number.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis is not rocket science.
\nThousands of businesses have been using such issue tracking systems
\n(also known as trouble ticket systems) for many years.
\nThere is off-the-shelf software to implement them.
\nBeyond the obvious advantages to the citizens of being able to
\ntell what's going on with their issues, such systems also
\ngreatly aid local governments by\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\n\"Front<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\ncutting down on telephone time
\nand complaints, plus letting government employees find out what's
\nbroken so they can fix it.\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\"Logo:<\/a>
\nAround here we hear a lot about people wanting governments to act like
\nbusinesses.
\nI think that's mostly wrong-headed, since governments exist to
\nprovide services to people while businesses exists to make profits.
\nBut there is one big similarity:
\nboth need to serve their customers, and in the case of local governments
\ntheir customers are their citizens.
\nWe hear a lot about fiscal responsibilty and efficiency,
\nand some local governments make efficiently serving their citizens
\na priority.
\nLeon County, Florida even makes its motto
\n"People Focused. Performance Driven."\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd it's not just Florida and elsewhere where you find such systems.
\nThe city of Dunwoody, Georgia goes even further,
\nwith
\n
\na citizen-reported map of issues around town<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\"Dunwoody<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nThat's slightly newer technology, as in google maps, which have been
\naround for years now.
\nSure, Leon County, Florida is a more populous place than Lowndes County.
\nBut Dunwoody, Georgia (pop. 46,000) is actually smaller than Valdosta
\n(pop. 56,000).
\nSure, Dunwoody is in the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)
\nand Leon County is in the Tallahassee MSA, both of which are much more
\npopulous than the Valdosta MSA.
\nBut if local governments around here want to brag about having an MSA,
\nmaybe they should start acting like one.\n<\/p>\n

\nI'd bet the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA)
\nand the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG)
\ncould help find other cities and counties around Georgia that
\nuse issue ticket systems and even citizen reporting maps,
\nand how they do it.\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do citizens have to nag our local governments to find out what's going on even about cleaning up sewage all over their back yards and under their houses? How about if our governments deploy issue tracking systems? Here's an example of how that works. As previously mentioned, Leon County, Florida, lets anyone Report a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,203,8,88,3,54,55],"tags":[246,253,8717,251,8751,8701,247,8702,226,12,7,8734,252,244,245,250,249,8700,248,6,8726,8727],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-florida","category-georgia","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","category-water","tag-13-march-2013","tag-city","tag-community","tag-dunwoody","tag-florida","tag-georgia","tag-issue-tracking-system","tag-lake","tag-leon-county","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-map","tag-metropolitan-statistical-area","tag-msa","tag-people","tag-performance","tag-transparency","tag-trouble-ticket-system","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}