As the people at Tesco say...

...'Every little (bit) helps'.

As you know, one of my primary passions here is the notion of increasing the relationship of engagement between the citizenry and their elected officials in local governance, where the goal is a much higher level of involvement on the part of residents. One in which we achieve something closer to a 90% voter turnout than the traditional 40% one, where people are casting votes as a result of having produced informed, qualified opinions, where they feel a far greater sense of both participation and 'ownership' of how the quality of their lives is impacted by their Councillors and Mayor.

How to effect this paradigm shift, this change in lifestyle, where people see being involved as a natural function of their day-to-day in the same why they might with full-contact, loving parenting, or their own health and fitness is, of course, a profound riddle, one that has many contributing factors, some simple, some complicated. Especially given the pretty sad default we've constructed, one where the majority of people are incredibly cynical about 'politics' in general, and who seemingly believe that their part of the local governance compact is a strange combination of a) casting a vote every four years and then expect not to be bothered by the process, and b) reserve the right to bitch and complain when things don't turn out.

sigh

Mahesh Butani, a friend and 2010 Hamilton mayoral candidate is a constant source of both information and inspiration on so many levels, and concerning so many arenas. His most recent contribution to my edification regarding civic engagement is the SeeClickFix website.

In a nutshell, the premise is 'see a problem, report a problem, fix a problem'. Here's how they put it:

Three basic principles

Empowerment. SeeClickFix allows anyone to report and track non-emergency issues anywhere in the world via the internet. This empowers citizens, community groups, media organizations and governments to take care of and improve their neighborhoods.

Efficiency. Two heads are better than one and 300 heads are better than two. In computer terminology, distributed sensing is particularly powerful at recognizing patterns, such as those that gradually take shape on a street. Besides, the government can't be in all places at all times. We make it easy and fun for everyone to see, click and fix.

Engagement. Citizens who take the time to report even minor issues and see them fixed are likely to get more engaged in their local communities. It's called a self-reinforcing loop. This also makes people happy and everyone benefits from that.

(Naturally, I especially love their final point.)

My feeling is that as much as the elected officials side of the 'better local governance' equation can be addressed by internal rules, regulations and guidelines regarding performance hand-in-hand with a mindset nicely represented in this post, what SeeClickFix has underway could be a substantial portion of what needs to occur on the other side of the equation.

Hats off to SeeClickFix!

I encourage everyone to check out what their site offers, and consider how it might help created better neighbourhoods, better communities...and a better city for us all.