What happens to your reports
How SolveSAUGA handles your data
You reported a pothole, or graffiti, or a broken streetlight, because you wanted it fixed. This page says exactly what happens to that report after you hit submit, in plain language, before someone else explains it for us. Toronto already knows what it feels like to find out a company was quietly using resident data after the fact. We're not doing that.
What we collect
You sign up with a phone number or an email. That's all we ask for. You get an anonymous username that has nothing to do with your phone, your email, or your name; many people on SolveSAUGA never give a name at all, and publicly, everyone is anonymous.
When you file a report, we collect the report: its location, a photo if you attach one, and whatever you wrote describing the problem. The location belongs to the pothole, not to you. We do not track where you are.
Inside the system, your account connects your reports to the phone or email you signed up with, because that's how we can tell you when something gets fixed. Administrators can see that connection. Nobody else can, and it never leaves SolveSAUGA.
Who sees what
Your report goes to the city, because that's the entire point of SolveSAUGA. The city needs your description and your location so a crew can find the problem and fix it, the same way they would if you'd called 311 yourself.
Inside SolveSAUGA, your report also gets used to track whether the city responds and how long it takes. That's how we hold the city to its own timelines.
What a data buyer never sees
The city gets your report, because that's the whole point: the problem, its location, your photo and description travel to the people who fix it, under your anonymous username.
A data buyer gets none of that. The phone number or email you signed up with, your anonymous username, your photos, your written words, and any link between your account and your reports stay inside SolveSAUGA. Full stop. Nobody we sell anything to ever sees who filed a report, what they said, or what they photographed.
The part we want to say plainly, not have a reporter say for us
We're building a second product that sells infrastructure data briefs to people planning construction, roadwork, and development near your neighbourhood. It doesn't sell your report. It sells a count.
"43 reports about road damage on this stretch of Sheppard this year" is the kind of thing that gets sold. "Who reported it, what they wrote, their photo, their address" is the kind of thing that never does, because it never leaves SolveSAUGA in the first place. A developer buying a corridor brief learns that a street took 43 road-damage reports this year. They don't learn your name. They don't read your words. They don't see your photo or your address. What crosses over is a number folded into other numbers, sometimes attached to a block-level reference like "the 1800 block of Sheppard East," never a street address, never a household.
We also don't publish a number small enough to point back to one report. If a stretch of road only has one or two reports on it, that's not a pattern we'd sell, because a number that small stops being a count and starts being a person.
Why we're doing this
SolveSAUGA runs on the reports you send in, and running it costs money. We could put ads on it or lock features behind a paywall. Instead we're funding it by selling aggregate data to people who need to understand what a street has been through before they dig it up or build next to it.
That means your report helps your street twice. Once when the pothole gets fixed. Once when the pattern it's part of tells a developer what that street has been dealing with before they break ground next to it.
Common questions
Does this change what happens to my report?
No. Your report goes to the city the same way it always has. This only describes what happens to the aggregate pattern your report becomes part of, after your identity and your words have already been stripped out of it.
Could someone figure out it was me from a number in a data brief?
No. A data brief never contains your address, your words, or a count small enough to trace back to one report. If we can't strip a pattern down to a plain number without it pointing at a specific person, we don't sell it.
Can I ask what happens with my specific reports?
Yes. Contact us and we'll walk you through exactly how your reports factor into any aggregate, in plain language, no runaround.
Does this affect how fast my report gets fixed?
No. Fixing your report and building the data product are two different systems. One doesn't wait on the other.
Where we stand
Toronto needs the housing. This data product exists so new buildings land on infrastructure everyone understands, with eyes open, not so they don't get built. If the numbers show a street is strained, the honest answer is to price and plan the fix, not to kill the homes. We don't take sides on any specific project, and our terms don't let a brief be waved around at a council meeting by anyone, in either direction.
Questions or concerns
Contact us and a person will answer, not a bot.
