i’d love to help raise awareness of and interest in the Inquiry API. I think there is so much potential there for innovation and improved efficiencies.

Going to blog about this soon. Will link back here.

Thanks, as always, for all of your hard work on this!

Yeah, the title of the post should really have been “Open311 GeoReport v2 Wish List.” I sort of made that point in the post, but it’s not clear with the title of the post. There’s been too much unfinished business with GeoReport v2 and infrastructure for me to be able to put attention elsewhere just yet.

If this was really a wish list for the whole Open311 effort, the top of the list would be some actual funding or human resources to help move the effort along.

Surprisingly enough, there’s no funding or revenue source for me to work on Open311 at all right now, but we’re working on it.

As far as the Inquiry API, I think it just needs some proposals building on NYC’s draft, so that the spec isn’t as NYC specific as it is now. Though ultimately, I think there’s an opportunity to do more to integrate GeoReport and Inquiry so you could have a ticket for requesting a service and you could have a ticket for requesting an answer.

I think 2012 could be a huge year for the Inquiry API. In fact, I think it could be something that cities look to adopt sooner than the standard GeoReport API.

Such a great wish list!

The last year has been exciting for us. It is amazing how many agencies are excited about going mobile and using open data.

Keep up the great work!

By “Literacy”, I mean more people inside and outside government who see the potential for Open311 to transform civic processes. We need more people outside the technical implementation community who understand that 311 services are much more than just a way to report potholes or other civic issues. People who get that this is a new framework for empowered citizens and progressive cities. We need more people speaking the Open311 language, not at the level of specs and validators, but at the higher level of implementation and social benefits.

This literacy and wider acceptance probably comes from evangelism — story telling, case studies, targeted blog posts written for certain audiences. For example, planning staff at a transportation department likely need a pitch that’s tuned to their specific issues. Those local pitches are something that many of us can contribute to — perhaps in the form of a cookbook to be used alongside the other documentation.