Technologies for CIPA:

Launching of the 1st Des Moines Digital Survey!

On May 17, 2003, citizens in Des Moines conducted their first "digital survey" in two neighborhoods – Indianola Hills and Gray’s Woods. About 10 citizen teams used handheld devices designed by the Fund for the City of New York to survey the infrastructural condition of their neighborhoods, and reported their survey results to the city government electronically. The results were then used by public officials to organize responsive policy actions, as well as by community leaders and citizens to discuss and organize their own community initiatives.

Des Moines Neighbors is currently organizing surveys in other neighborhoods, which are usually held on Saturday mornings.

	This is one of the Indianola Hills teams. Mark White, a community leader in the neighborhood, was interviewed by Des Moines Register about the digital survey campaign on May 17.
This is one of the Gray’s Woods teams, who surveyed part of their neighborhood on May 17.
	Before the citizen teams started the digital survey, they received a short orientation and were reminded about some of the essential “do’s” and “don’t” in the process.
During the survey, 2 to 4 citizen participants form a team. One of them is responsible for recording any community concern into the handheld, and the other participants are responsible for identifying the problem and verifying the records In this picture, one of the Gray’s Woods team identified a broken curb in their neighborhood.
	This is a sample route map. Neighborhood leaders are responsible for designing the route. The city of Des Moines provides the map through their Geographical Information System. Each survey team follows the designated route on the map to survey a particular area methodologically.
When citizens finish a survey, they may have meetings in the Des Moines Neighbors office to discuss the results, and upload the data to the City’s computing system to generate work orders.
	The City of Des Moines has a state-of-the-art service request management system that allows citizens to review the status of their service requests online. The results of the Des Moines survey are uploaded into this system so that neighborhood leaders and citizens can regularly check the status of city actions and hold government accountable for results.