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The internet of broken things

When most people refer to something as Web 3.0 I usually call shenanigans. When Sir Tim Berners-Lee calls something "a component of Web 3.0" I take notice. This is what he said of the Semantic Web.

The Semantic Web is the "internet of things", compared to Web 1.0 and 2.0 which perhaps could respectively be described as the "internet of information" and the "internet of services". Back in 2011 I was already boring people about "being objective", but a conversation with the award winning Carl Haggerty this week reminded me of this again.

So what's it got to do with local governments?

Councils look after a huge number of physical assets. My area has 10,000+ streetlights for example, and at some point they'll all exist as an entity on the internet. Actually, they kind of do already.

Here's a link to report a problem with the streetlight nearest to where I work for example. In fact you could do the same with any of the 10,000+ streetlights I previously mentioned and other councils are adopting this approach too.

What this means is that you can start to fundamentally change the way people interact with their council.

Rather than raising a new case for every broken thing, it means that people could subscribe to information about specific assets. Rather than 100 reports about the same thing, councils would store 1 report and details of 100 people who have subscribed to receive updates about it.

In fact it doesn't have to be an asset. Potholes or flooding could become a "thing" on the internet as easily as a streetlamp and people could subscribe to updates.

There are obvious efficiency savings with this approach. Council officers would have 100 times less admin work dealing with my example above, with just one record to update.

More than that, it's opening up data and allowing people up to keep up to date with problems with their area should they wish to know about them. It also casts a light into the back offices of councils, showing people that streetlights don't magically get fixed by the sodium-vapor fairy whilst they're at work.

I'm sure Sir Tim didn't have it in mind when he spoke about the Semantic Web, but the internet of broken things could revolutionise the way people interact with their council.
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Location: Newbury, West Berkshire, UK

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