App City: Tackling Municipal Nuisances With PublicStuff

PublicStuff is an app that helps answer that question. Through the app, urban residents can alert the city government to minor problems by uploading location-tagged pictures and a description.

You can still use the city’s 311 system, which has a Web site and an app, but once you have left your complaint, it can feel as though it has disappeared into the ether. PublicStuff lives in a specific place on your phone, allowing for immediacy in reporting a problem, and it provides accountability as users receive updates on which department has received the complaint, as well as how and when the issue is being resolved.

Ideally, the app would provide a pain-free way of reporting and keeping track of problems with users having only to point, shoot and hit send.

Unfortunately, for now, that’s not quite how PublicStuff works, at least not in New York. The city has yet to officially subscribe to the service, which would make PublicStuff its digital customer service platform. Because the app exists here only as a third party, when complaints are recorded, the city has no incentive to respond. PublicStuff’s New York page is filled with requests that have yet to be acknowledged by the city or, if acknowledged, to be taken care of.

Often, when the city claims to have fixed a problem, like a broken streetlight on Seventh Avenue, the app does not record whether the request was accepted, is in progress or is closed (as it claims to do). One of the few examples of the app seeming to work ideally — an uneven sidewalk being fixed quickly after a woman had an accident tripping over it — was reported by Lily Liu, one of the company’s founders and its C.E.O.

PublicStuff refers to requests in cities that have not yet subscribed to its service as “orphan requests,” in a tacit acknowledgment of relative futility. In contrast, Philadelphia is a subscriber and has had more than 12,000 service requests submitted. According to PublicStuff, 90 percent of those requests have been completed, which the app defines as accepted and closed, with a reason given for the closing.

But even if it has yet to take off in New York, PublicStuff has potential to lead to a simplified version of civic involvement, making communities out of any residents with smartphones. It’s not often that an app confers extra responsibilities on users; apps like Seamless allow users to sit back and let things come to them. PublicStuff is different because it uses the frictionless model, which developers like, to help people understand how their government works and how they can help their government work better. At its best, PublicStuff gently reminds citizens that cleaning up the city is everyone’s job.

Have a favorite New York City app? Send us a tip by e-mail to appcity@nytimes.com or by Twitter to @Jonesieman.