Product · 2020–23

Civic Issue-Reporting Platform for a City

Overview

A civic issue-reporting platform deployed for a city, built on the open-source FixMyStreet codebase, a Perl/PSGI web application that lets residents report local infrastructure problems (potholes, broken lights, etc.) pinned to a map location and routed to the responsible authority.

The Challenge

A city rolling out citizen issue-reporting needs the platform localized into the local language, branded for the municipality, and reliably deployable, work that spans FixMyStreet’s Perl backend, its template system, and a full translation pipeline. The goal was a production civic service, not just a demo.

What We Built

Working within the FixMyStreet architecture: the PSGI app (app.psgi), Perl library (perllib/), templates, and configuration adapted for the city deployment. The repo carries a full localization workflow, locale/, a lcl2 regional variant, and Transifex integration (.tx) for managing translations into the local language. Operations are containerized (Dockerfile, docker-compose) with a Vagrant box for local dev and Travis CI plus Cypress for testing.

Technologies & Approach

FixMyStreet’s Perl/Plack stack and template system were extended and configured rather than rebuilt, the right call for a civic platform where reliability and an established issue-routing model matter more than novelty. Effort focused on localization (gettext-style catalogs + Transifex) and reproducible deployment via Docker/Vagrant.

Outcome / Impact

Delivered a localized, branded civic-reporting service for a city, demonstrating the ability to take a large, established open-source platform and localize, containerize, and operate it in production, including non-mainstream stacks (Perl) and full translation pipelines.

Capabilities Demonstrated

Standing up civic / govtech issue-reporting services for a city
Customizing and deploying large open-source platforms
Localization / i18n with Transifex pipelines
Working in established Perl/PSGI codebases
Containerized, reproducible deployments (Docker, Vagrant, CI)

More work See all →

Product 2026