Thanks to everyone who expressed a desire to poke Levitin with a stick. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to reply to everyone. So far, we’ve found: several website builders lawyers a road construction specialist a couple of people willing to cover the unavoidable organizational costs (hosting, etc.) Given all that, and taking into account my not-entirely-successful crowdsourcing experience so far (nearly 200 people responded, and then proceeded to quarrel with each other), I’m ready to draft the project description myself. In full keeping with the principle: we discussed it, and I decided. So. The site should be built on Ushahidi technology. It’s already fairly well known. If you have no idea what it is, you can watch this video: Probably the best-known Russian site built on this platform is Help Map, which was created specifically to help wildfire victims and proved itself extremely effective. The workflow would look like this: You find a pothole in the road You photograph it You add it to the map using geolocation tools or manually Your pothole is considered confirmed once you upload a copy of the complaint you filed with the traffic police (GIBDD, Russia’s road police) and other relevant agencies All subsequent correspondence is also scanned and uploaded A pothole is “closed” with a photo of the repaired road section and a scanned response stating that the responsible official has been held accountable. We need a section called “sample complaints for every occasion” We need a section called “if your car was damaged.” Someone sent me an excellent court ruling: a guy drove his Lexus into a pothole, and the repair cost 99,000 rubles. The money was recovered from the local road maintenance organization. What’s more, higher courts upheld the ruling. So it’s a perfectly viable option.
Let them pay for bent rims. 5. We need a section called “monitoring road construction.” You remember that story about the MKAD (Moscow Ring Road) supposedly being 15 cm (about 6 inches) narrower than the design specifications. There was a lot of noise, but nothing ever came of it. That needs to be fixed. 6. This is fundamentally important. It turns out there are dozens of similar sites. Practically every major city has one. So our project absolutely must not compete with them or try to swallow them up. Quite the opposite. We should promote them. Every association, organization, and so on should be able to have its own section, act on behalf of the organization rather than as individuals, and so forth. Every visitor to the site should be able to quickly and easily find the relevant organization in their city and, if they want, continue working through that organization’s own site. Local activists should be able to use the site as a tool for their own public profile, including during elections. I see nothing wrong with Vasya Petrov trying to make his way into the council of Katsapetovka settlement (a joking placeholder name for a backwater town) by fighting for better roads in his hometown of Katsapetovka.
(I don’t know what the picture means. Found it through Google. It’s pretty.) Once again, here’s what we need to get started: About three people who can put this Ushahidi site together and maintain it afterward. People who will fill out the “sample complaints” section. A testing group—people from different cities who will put the site through its paces and find errors, bugs, and inconveniences. Anyone who wants to take part in a good cause, write to me at navalny at gmail dot com. Use site as the subject line. I won’t reply to anyone directly; I’ll just sort all emails with that subject and create a Google Group where the further discussion will take place. Calmly and without rushing, we’ll build something that will cause a lot of trouble for all sorts of big and small crooks—I’m sure of it. If everything goes well, and at the beginning of next year we see that the system works, then we’ll launch something that will really turn everything upside down. To lift the veil just a little, I’ll name only three letters: housing and utilities services (ZhKKH, the municipal housing/utilities sector). Now that is a bottomless barrel devouring trillions. It’s going to be fun.