Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

It’s no secret that many D.C. city services have improved over the years. But if you feel like you were treated in particularly poor way while at the DMV, for example, there’s now a way for you help give it a failing grade.

Yesterday Mayor Vincent Gray rolled out Grade.DC.gov, a new website that allows residents to offer feedback on five city agencies and contribute to giving them each a grade:

Grade.DC.gov harnesses innovative analytical technology to see what you are saying online about services provided to you by the District Government. We collect your feedback from the website and combine the data with your comments on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and various blogs. This data allows us to form a grade for each of the pilot agencies – DMV, DCRA, DDOT, DPW and DPR. This grade helps us to be more transparent and make strategic improvements to our services.

So if that DMV experience merits comment—whether good or bad—you can send a tweet or a text message or merely fill out an online feedback form. The same goes for the Department of Transportation, Department of Public Works, Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, and Department of Parks and Recreation. On July 11, D.C. officials will compile all the feedback they get and produce a grade for each of the five agencies.

It’s a good idea in that the eventual outcome—a single grade for participating agencies—could serve as a simple and understandable indicator as to how they’re serving residents. The feedback form isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but that the tool will measure tweeted reactions is certainly a step forward. How often have you found yourself posting a sharply worded 140-character missive against a particular city service, after all? Now D.C. will actually be using them for something. (To be fair, some of the agencies included in the pilot program, such as DDOT and DCRA, are already very good at responding to complaints and inquiries over Twitter.)

In April, D.C. rolled out an updated 311 app, allowing residents to request services and track their progress.

And just for the record, my service at the DMV over the last few years has been fine.