Public service provision in the developing world is challenged by a lack of coherence and consistency in the amount of resources local authorities have in their endowment. Especially where non-planned urban settlements (e.g. slums) are present, the frequent and constant change of the urban environment poses big challenges to the effective delivery of services. In this paper we report on our experiences with Taarifa: a location-based application built through community development that allows community reporting and managing of local issues.