CivicLens
An AI-assisted civic reporting and tracking platform for Sri Lanka that helps citizens report local infrastructure issues and gives councils tools to validate, group, prioritize, and resolve them transparently.
The Challenge & Core Problem
High-Level Briefing
The proposal describes a broken feedback loop between citizens and local authorities: reports are fragmented across informal channels, citizens cannot reliably track resolution, and councils lack a structured way to triage and publicly demonstrate performance.
"Create a low-friction public-service reporting and tracking platform that helps local authorities act on citizen reports and makes progress visible."
Hard Timebox & Rules
- Citizen reporting is designed to work through a web-first PWA without requiring an app download.
- Computer vision is proposed to validate and categorize issue photos; PostGIS groups duplicate reports into shared tickets.
- Public scorecards and SLA escalation are proposed to support accountability and follow-through.
Open Risks & Pressure Factors
- The proposal depends on local-authority partnership and access to operational workflows.
- Image classification, geospatial deduplication, and response-time targets are proposed capabilities, not reported pilot results.
Leadership & Personal Contribution
Team Member
Real-Time Architectural Dilemmas Under Clock Pressure
The Technical Solution
CivicLens proposes a web-first civic service with photo validation and issue categorization, geospatial duplicate grouping, council ticket workflows, SLA escalation, and public performance scorecards.
Data Flow & Architecture
The proposal separates a Next.js PWA for citizens, administrators, and public maps from a FastAPI application layer and PostgreSQL/PostGIS data services. Redis and Celery are proposed for caching and background processing, with image storage and computer-vision inference used to validate reports and support routing and escalation.
Critical Data Pipelines
The Retrospective: What Worked & What Needs Work
What Worked
- ✓The proposal connects citizen-facing reporting with council workflows and public accountability.
- ✓It identifies app-download friction and duplicate case handling as core design constraints.
- ✓The roadmap distinguishes a core reporting MVP from later intelligence and pilot stages.
What Still Needs Work
- ✕CivicLens is presented as a proposal; the document describes a future pilot and does not report a live council deployment or measured outcomes.
Hard-Won Engineering Takeaways
From Citizen Report to Public Accountability
CivicLens links a citizen’s report to council action and visible progress through validation, spatial clustering, ticket tracking, and aggregated service metrics.