Sweden follows Norway with open source "Fix My Street"

According to a report on the EC's open source portal, Joinup, Sweden is following the example of Norway in using the "Fix My Street" open source software that was developed in the UK. The software enables citizens to easily report problems and helps authorities identify and prioritise them. A pilot version of the national service, "Fixa Min Gata", is expected to become operational in March or April and will allow citizens to report such things as potholes, broken pavements, graffiti or non-functional street lighting.

Norway rolled out a similar service, "FiksGataMi", in 2011, also based on the mySociety's FixMyStreet service. FixMyStreet is available in the UK as a package for local authorities and is already used by councils such as Barnet.

The Swedish deployment is being developed by three organisations; Sambruk, made up of a hundred cooperating municipalities, Kivos, a network of municipalities who promote the use of FOSS and open standards, and FFKP, a non-profit that 'promotes a free society, built on free culture and free software'. Development began in 2011 and the beta site, released last year, runs on Debian Linux systems with Apache web servers. The full version, which was funded in November 2012, will see 3 million kroner (around £295,000) being invested in building a portal to host and reuse services like "Fixa Min Gata" on a cloud platform.

(djwm)