App for reporting election posters still on the streets 7 days after the elections

grodge

I have posted this elsewhere online and I want to share it here. I had a brainwave today after reading about the requirement to remove election posters 7 days after the elections or else face fines. Create an app that has the following features

• ID's your location
• Gives you a list of candidates in that area (or just a list of candidates based on a constituency selection)
• The option to report a candidate's poster as still being up 7 days after the elections
• Option to take a photo of the poster and email it as an attachment
• Send an email to the local litter office.

So if you are walking down the street and see a poster after the 30th of May you can open the app, it gets your location, you select from a list the offending candidate and you email it to the local council litter warden.
The app would be quite innovative and a good opportunity for developers to get their name out there. I can see it being picked up by the media as a good idea and it would be a solid addition to a developers portfolio.
Would anyone be interested in making such an app? If so have at it, the idea is all yours. I just want those poxy posters down ASAP and I think the threat of fines would be a good incentive for the parties to remove them all straight after the elections.
Let me know what you think of the idea.
Thanks

Creamy Goodness

The camera app does this as it geo tags photos.

Kavrocks

grodge wrote: »

Would anyone be interested in making such an app?

An app that only has a use for about a week every 2 years or so? No, it'd be the definition of a waste of time. It is refreshing that you are just putting this out there though instead of what is usually seen on here ideas-wise.

Graham

grodge wrote: »

Let me know what you think of the idea.

I'm not sure the glory of being labelled the 'litter monitor app developer' is going to be enough to entice many Dev's to invest a lot of time in this.

The Corinthian

From an intellectual point of view, I think such an app would be interesting. User spots an offending poster, photographs it, then it gets geo-tagged (you'd need to integrate with something like Google Maps for a street name as GPS coordinates are not going to be accepted by anyone you're reporting to) then emailed to the nearest (again calculated via LBS) office.

For bonus points, a complimentary Web site could publish such photos and keep a running total of candidate/party that's offending the most.

However, there are two problems I foresee, of which the first has already been made painfully clear; which is that it would be an app that will at best be used for a few weeks before becoming redundant for at least two years - so hardly a good time investment for any developer, unless they want to blitz the press ahead of time and capitalize while the sun is (briefly) shining.

You could do it, but you'd want a very good PR plan in place and ready to go to take care of the limited window of attention that such an app would garner, and even then I'm not sure it would be worth the effort.

The other problem I would foresee is whether reporting it would make any difference. Call me cynical, but I really can see the local council litter warden binning such emails if they ever started coming in in numbers. One of the reasons that there's so many cases of posters breaking the rules in Ireland, is because Ireland has a bit of a Mickey Mouse system where it comes to these things, with understaffed civil servants who don't really give a crap and do the bare minimum to get by, in charge of enforcing these rules.

As such, I'd imagine that rather than expose the extent of election poster misuse, such an app would more likely expose the sheer lack of regulation enforcement that exists.

Banjoxed

And will this app be able to deal with mischievous stealing of posters and their subsequent putting up. It happens. It happened to a campaign where I had possession of the posters, knew where every poster was put up. Every site was checked every day.

Immediately after the election concerned I took the lot down - two had disappeared during the campaign and one turned up two weeks after the deadline on a pole in a field. It was removed immediately it was noticed.

So, will this app be a mischief makers charter then?

Draco

Fix My Area is a more generic version of what you're talking about.