-
The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
-the Open311 API in the
-Norwegian FixMyStreet service.
-Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
-reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
-New Zealand version of
-FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
-me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
-municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
-Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
-FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
-to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
-issues with the Open311 specification.
-
-
One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
-handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
-reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
-receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
-able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
-it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
-I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
-of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
-submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
-Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
-methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
-know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
-some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.
-
-
A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
-which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
-run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
-each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
-should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
-here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
-category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
-as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
-it.
-
-
The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
-differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
-while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
-quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
-report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
-open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
-should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.
-
-
The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
-near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
-use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
-should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
-and range= options.
-
-
The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
-several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
-to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
-report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
-available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
-to best handle this. I've noticed
-SeeClickFix added
-latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
-solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
-Will have to investigate this a bit more.
-
-
My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
-up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
-list available via Gmane to use for
-discussions instead of only
-a forum. Oh,
-well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
-also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
-seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
-fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
-work like the free software project communities I am used to.
-
@@ -569,7 +520,7 @@ work like the free software project communities I am used to.
@@ -657,15 +608,15 @@ work like the free software project communities I am used to.