Get interactive about overflowing bins

Dublin residents may soon be able to report broken street lights, overflowing dustbins or other problems with city services by simply sending a picture message to Dublin City Council from their mobile phones. John Collins reports.

City councils, universities and telecoms companies in Dublin, Barcelona and Helsinki are collaborating on a project that will provide access for citizens to their city administration using a variety of mobile and online technologies.

The €5 million Innovative Cities for the Next Generation (Icing) project is being funded as part of the EU's Sixth Framework Programme.

The pilot project will take place in Dublin's Grangegorman area and the technology is initially being provided to Dublin City Council inspectors, who are auditing whether all public buildings are accessible to people with disabilities.

John Donovan, co-ordinator of Icing with Dublin Institute of Technology's Digital Media Centre, says that although location data is automatically attached to the picture submitted by mobile telephone, no information on the identity of the sender or their phone is collected or retained.

The initiative will be showcased at the upcoming Cities of Knowledge conference, which is being jointly organised by Dublin City Council and DIT.

Peter Finnegan, director of international relations and research with Dublin City Council, said technology could be used to do lots of things in the city that would make it more attractive as a location for knowledge-intensive industries to be based.

He said the project was a great example of how interaction between the city and its citizens could be enhanced.

"There is a huge silent majority of people in the city whose voice is never heard," Finnegan said. "They may see something that aggravates them at a moment in time and they should have the ability to send us a notification immediately when that happens."

Jon Udell, a senior technology evangelist with Microsoft who will speak at the conference, says there are huge possibilities when "the operational data of government becomes more transparently available to citizens".

He gives the example of the Chicago Crime Map, an online application that takes data from the Chicago police and combines it with Google maps to show where crimes are being reported in the city.

The Cities of Knowledge conference takes place at Clontarf Castle, Dublin, on November 20th.