We launched RosYama on May 30. I think the launch has been quite successful. There has been strong media coverage, solid traffic, and right away hundreds of users began adding road defects to the site. In a month and a half, nearly 6,000 cases of road surface damage violating GOST (Russian state standards) have been registered. A dedicated RosYama app for iPhones and iPads will be released soon.
Most importantly, the project works. RosYama really does get those potholes fixed. Of course, effectiveness varies from city to city and region to region. Where mayors are smarter and more cunning (for example, in Krasnodar and some other places), they simply monitor RosYama themselves and repair defects without waiting for complaints to come in. Where mayors are more stubborn and less bright, we have to flood the prosecutor's office with complaints. But on average, RosYama helps.
Nevertheless, our work on the project could not be considered satisfactory because there was practically no feedback. We overestimated our capacity, and as a result fil_defense, whom I had asked to oversee RosYama, ended up buried in emails and problems he could not deal with, because I was burying him in emails and problems related to our main work. The site is designed for standardized work with road defects, but in 20% of cases all sorts of individual issues come up: a pothole is in a courtyard, and the traffic police say GOST (Russian state standards) does not apply there it is unclear who actually owns the road the local traffic cops are complete idiots and simply forward letters to entirely the wrong address and so on Someone has to talk to all these people, advise them, explain things. In short, everyone was struggling, and there was little to show for it. It was obvious that we needed a dedicated person who would work on RosYama continuously on a volunteer basis, and who would genuinely find it interesting. Thinking back to how it all started, I realized who that person could be. After all, it all began with fezeev, whose successful actions we decided to replicate within the project. We offered Fyodor the role of chief RosYama guy and, with our help, to keep developing the project. Fyodor arrived on a motorcycle and in a suit that looked like a spacesuit (it immediately became clear why he hates potholes so much), and he agreed. So please welcome him — he has already started work. Now fe**zeev,** on a volunteer basis and without leaving his main job, is coordinating everything connected with RosYama, replying to your emails, pressuring officials, working with the guys from Grinsight, who built the site, and of course with us as well. We have huge plans, and I am sure that, in addition to significantly improving our current work, we will launch several very interesting subprojects based on RosYama and in cooperation with RosPil.
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