1. Rearranged the order of information on the tweets to bring the activity type and location to the front of the tweet with the neighborhood and city hashtags at the end. This is to facilitate being able to see more relevant information when alerts for tweets or text messages come on various devices (mobile phones for example).
2. Replaced forward slashes “/” with ampersands “&” for street corner locations to be compatible with Google and Bing maps

Cities are experimenting with releasing more public data, engaging with citizens on social networks, adopting open source software, and finding ways to use new technologies to work with their citizens. They’ve been doing it through the depth of the Great Recession, amidst aging infrastructure, spiraling costs and flat or falling budgets. In that context, using technology and the Internet to make government work better and cities smarter is no longer a “nice to have” … it’s become a must-have.

But first, they had to convince neighbors that the current Neighborhood Watch didn’t work.  That the traditional telephone communications were not feasible in a modern world.  The began teaching older neighbors about text messaging and FaceBook.  Helping them switch to bright screened Windows Phones, Androids and iPhones, add SMS packages to their accounts, open FaceBook and Twitter accounts and get them subscribed to their neighborhood Tweet3po feed.  This led to awareness, and participation and eventually, the capture of a suspect in a very violent crime.

So, that’s the Tweet3po model:

1. Start a neighborhood FaceBook page
2. Start a neighborhood Twitter account
3. Get your neighbors involved!
4. Have your local agency (police, fire, etc) post their dispatch data in an rss, Atom or ODATA feed like this
5. Find neighborhood polygon boundaries or other interesting geographic data for your city like this. 
6. Contact US and we’ll get you setup in the system! 

 So, it’s as easy as that

To quote the Mayor: “In San Francisco, we are trying to turn government into an organizing platform for civic engagement by giving our residents the tools to build the kind of government that works for them.”

From Mayor Newsom’s press release:

Announcing the Open 311 Platform
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Today, I am pleased to announce that we are going to transform 311 into a tool of even greater value by building an Open 311 platform. Open 311 will allow software developers to write web applications that do two things: 1) get service request data from the 311 system, and 2) submit new service requests to city departments.

Making an Open 311 API (Application Programming Interface) available to our tech savvy citizens will open the current 311 service to those who wish to build applications on top of it.

We hope that many applications will be built from Open 311. For example, a smart phone application that allows citizens to easily report new issues to city departments with their device’s camera and GPS system. This would create mapped and photographed issues that make it easier for the city to locate, investigate and resolve problems.

The success of DataSF and the DataSF App Showcase has proven that the public will create innovative applications when given access to the information they need. We anticipate the same response and innovation from Open 311.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/11/neighborhood-watch-20-nei_n_256304.html