blog/tags/open311/index.html

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   5   <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged open311</title>
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  13        <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
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  19  <p>Entries tagged "open311".</p>
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  26  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
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  29   2011-04-29 10:00
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  34 <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
  35 the <ahref="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
  36 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
  37 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
  38 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
  39 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
  40 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
  41 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
  42 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
  43 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
  44 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
  45 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
  46 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
  47
  48 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
  49 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
  50 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
  51 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
  52 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
  53 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
  54 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
  55 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
  56 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
  57 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
  58 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
  59 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
  60 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
  61
  62 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
  63 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
  64 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
  65 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
  66 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
  67 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
  68 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
  69 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
  70 it.</p>
  71
  72 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
  73 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
  74 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
  75 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
  76 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
  77 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
  78 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
  79
  80 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
  81 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
  82 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
  83 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
  84 and range= options.</p>
  85
  86 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
  87 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
  88 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
  89 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
  90 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
  91 to best handle this.  I've noticed
  92 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
  93 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
  94 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
  95 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
  96
  97 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
  98 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
  99 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
 100 discussions instead of only
 101 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
 102 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
 103 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
 104 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
 105 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
 106 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
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 113   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
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 124 <div id="sidebar">
 125
 126 <h2>Archive</h2>
 127 <ul>
 128
 129 <li>2011
 130 <ul>
 131
 132 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
 133
 134 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
 135
 136 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
 137
 138 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (6)</a></li>
 139
 140 </ul></li>
 141
 142 <li>2010
 143 <ul>
 144
 145 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
 146
 147 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
 148
 149 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
 150
 151 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
 152
 153 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 154
 155 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
 156
 157 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
 158
 159 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
 160
 161 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
 162
 163 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
 164
 165 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
 166
 167 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
 168
 169 </ul></li>
 170
 171 <li>2009
 172 <ul>
 173
 174 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
 175
 176 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
 177
 178 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
 179
 180 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
 181
 182 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 183
 184 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
 185
 186 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
 187
 188 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
 189
 190 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
 191
 192 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
 193
 194 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
 195
 196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
 197
 198 </ul></li>
 199
 200 <li>2008
 201 <ul>
 202
 203 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
 204
 205 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
 206
 207 </ul></li>
 208
 209 </ul>
 210
 211
 212
 213 <h2>Tags</h2>
 214 <ul>
 215
 216  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
 217
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 231
 232  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (89)</a></li>
 233
 234  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (9)</a></li>
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 236  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (11)</a></li>
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 251
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 254  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (1)</a></li>
 255
 256  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (20)</a></li>
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 258  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (38)</a></li>
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 260  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
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 262  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
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 264  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
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 266  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
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 268  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (23)</a></li>
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 270  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (3)</a></li>
 271
 272  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (24)</a></li>
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 274  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
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 276  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (8)</a></li>
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 278  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (20)</a></li>
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 280  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
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 282  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (15)</a></li>
 283
 284 </ul>
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