Signalen

Signalen software helps cities receive, manage and solve nuisance reports. Signalen is open source and therefore free for others to use.

How it works

Signalen gives municipalities one integrated tool to manage and prioritize nuisance reports.

It helps prioritize and manage issues and workload, and can send work assignments to city departments and external contractors.

Signalen is faster and more efficient because it:

• automatically places incoming reports in the right category
• easily interacts and exchanges data with other systems in the workflow

Features

Signalen includes:

• a citizen facing form with automatic category selection based on algorithmic text processing
• the ability to combine complaints with other public space data, for example from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors on street furniture
• an administration interface to allow report triaging and management by the control center
• automatic alerts to city staff based on analysis of combined reports
• automatic updates to residents about the status of their report
• rich data so city staff can analyze long term trends
• easy integration with other software systems, including municipal contractors’

Signalen is an open source project - this means it’s always being added to and improved.

Worldclass software, built for Amsterdam

Built by the City of Amsterdam in 2018, Signalen now handles more than 250,000 reports every year. It replaced over 40 different reporting channels in Amsterdam, which had previously been separately staffed.

In response to strong interest from other Dutch cities, the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) launched a Signalen project in 2020.

The Signalen teams

Amsterdam has had a Signalen team in place since 2018.

VNG Realisatie is working together with ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Almere and the Amsterdam team to make Signalen fully reusable outside of Amsterdam.

The VNG team will start work in spring 2020.

This codebase is being stewarded by the Foundation for Public Code.

The Signalen teams’ goals for 2020 are to:

• make the code reusable for other municipalities
• get Signalen live at another municipality

Find out more

Read all our Signalen news (in Dutch).

We have specific information for civil servants on how to get Signalen for your organization.

Technologists, please dive into our code and community - we’re friendly and always eager for more collaborators.

Or email us at signalen@publiccode.net - we’d love to hear how we can make Signalen work for you.