IBM, a platinum sponsor of international research firm Parks Associates' CONNECTIONS at TIA 2012, recently announced a new project to help the nation’s second largest school district become one of the greenest and most sustainable by making energy conservation and cost savings as easy as sending a text message.
The Los Angeles Unified School District is empowering its students, teachers and staff to identify maintenance issues such as leaky faucets and broken air conditioning units by sending text messages and photos through their mobile phones. A mobile reporting solution developed by IBM Business Partner CitySourced sends the photos and texts for analysis by IBM software that automatically shows staff where the problem is located using geographic information software from IBM Business Partner Esri.
Within the first eight months of implementing the program LAUSD responded to more than 750 maintenance requests and have since surpassed 1,650 reports to date. LAUSD and CitySourced are scheduled to implement an outreach program to socialize the application at school sites in the second quarter of 2012. With the combination of word of mouth and the outreach program, LAUSD anticipates the number of reports to significantly rise in 2012.
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