*The thing that's seriously different here is that this San Francisco urban apparatchik doesn't even bother to alert the mainstream media, but starts boasting about his open-source software and his "civic hackers," directly, on Mashable.
http://mashable.com/2010/08/13/open311-apps/
"Chris Vein is the Chief Information Officer for the City and County of San Francisco, and is responsible for setting the city’s technology vision and direction, ensuring the development and implementation of citywide standards, policies, and procedures, as well as running the technology “utility” department.
"Five months ago, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom stood with President Obama’s Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and myself to announce Open311 API to the world. It was a historic moment for government technology with several large cities pledging to adopt a standard API. Our vision at the time was to empower the technological community to create a whole new generation of civic apps. Today, that has become a reality. Here are five apps for city hall.
"1. TweetMy311 gives anyone with a smartphone and a Twitter account the ability to report a city-related issue (like a pothole in need of repair) in 140 characters or less. Through the creative use of hashtags and geo-tagging, tweets are sent directly to the department that does the work.
"Mark Headd, creator of the site Vox Populi, developed the app in his spare time to “learn more about building Open311 applications, and to share that information with developers that want to improve their communities.” Civic hackers like Headd are exactly what we had in mind when we launched Open311 API...."
