Minneapolis 311

This is an excellent tool. The design is simple and mostly intuitive to operate. It actually gets a response from the city which really makes it meaningful. The best part is the automatic linkage of photographic documentation with the issue. What I find surprising is that I have encountered at least one City of Minneapolis inspector who writes up nuisance orders but does no documentation, written or photographic. City regulatory personnel need to have this kind of tool for their work so that their orders are accurate and documented. Starting using this tool and track the progress of making your neighborhood more liveable.

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The app is basic, making anything you're reporting a chore. Couple that with a lazy, uninterested city and you've got yourself a near worthless app. Worse part: there is no way to delete your account. The company behind this app only “deactivates” and explicitly details on their website that they will “continue to make publicly available all user-provided content indefinitely to their partners and third parties.” So there’s that for you. Thanks Minneapolis for keep an eye on citizens once again.

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The app itself is fine, but the city isn’t always responsive. I understand they’re overwhelmed with winter parking/snow emergency reports right now, but it seems like they ignore many critical safety violations people report, at least in my neighborhood. Almost makes reporting feel pointless because the issues will often go unresolved.

I love that the city cares enough to actually make it easier to report and resolve issues. No more graffiti in my neighborhood! Everything I've reported has been resolved within 2 weeks, and usually a lot quicker than that. Can't say enough good things about the app! One annoying thing about the city is the distinction between city land and park land. For example If you use this app to report graffiti in a park it will be closed and won't be cleaned up. You need to email the park board to actually get that resolved. Wish they could do that for you!!

Making reports works well enough, but the map view is clunky and difficult to use: It doesn't show all issues in the area being displayed, and you have to manually reload more issue points when you move the map, but it won't let you do that if you only move the map a little bit. The voting system and issue following have bugs. On some screens there's a weird transition bug where you can see the fields as static and then they spin and fade... something's not happening in the right order there. Overall, it mostly gets the job done, but it could use a lot of cleaning up.