Finally… An Incredible Flex App for Government.

If you're like me, you hate when your blog engine screws up the formatting of your already challenging-to-comprehend posts. Sorry. I'm working on it.

Again, if you're like me, you are frustrated by the lack of tangible examples of Flex within the Municipal Enterprise. (Or more to the point, if you're like me, you may be frustrated by the lack of Municipal Enterprise within the municipal enterprise that employs you... but I digress.)

Finally, I found one.

Where else, but what seems, more and more, like the place to be and be seen. The place where there is more "do" than "don't". The place where your donut can have whatever you want on it, and you might find yourself eating it with Chuck Palahniuk. Whatever their business model is about up there, I want some.

Portland, Oregon.

...They've also got rainwater, and lots of it. These days, in "the biz" we call it stormwater, and we've got the (unfunded) Federal mandates and entire municipal programs that go with such a choice of nomenclature.

Apparently, Portland gots lots of stormwater, and because they were too busy building cool web apps and putting in alternative transportation infrastructure, they got the situation where a bunch of their stormwater lines co-exist with their sewer lines. Eew is right (however it's spelled).

They've also got a $1.4 BILLION project ahead of them to uncross their wires, so to speak. Think of the alternative transportation you could fund with $1,400,000,000.That's about $2500 per person. This is a city. Not a county. Not a state. A city of half-a-million people who have finally realized, apparently, that a) their shit does stink; b) they don't want to see it after a rainstorm.

Anyway. Portland did what any sensible municipality would do in such a situation. Well, no, I wasn't going to say that, but I'm sure there were some bloodshot eyes around City Hall when the bill got totalled (it is Portland, after all). No, they found the coolest mashup engine worthy of a $1.4 Billion pricetag, and they put a Flex front end on it.

The spasms of my academic and information-architecture orgasms have only now subsided after reading about the company whose tech backs it all up. Hello Thetus... I want to snuggle.

The Portland app is called Tupolo Storm (named after the Tupolo tree, hopefully), and it is whiz-bang. Check out these screenshots: One Two Three. And I'm sure that's not even "the good stuff". You can read the semantic GIS equivalent of pornography that discusses it here. And despite the title, it is safe for work.

Sigh. Dare to dream.

Anybody know any other municipal (or government in general) Flex apps?