Mayor Martin Walsh joined a walk-through of his Savin Hill neighborhood on Saturday morning to highlight his office’s efforts to catalogue, fix, and track solutions to ground-level problems on every street in the city. As a light rain fell, the mayor and a small entourage of aides — trailed by several TV camera crews— walked from his house on Tuttle Street and circled the block via Sydney Street to Savin Hill Avenue.

Along the way, Walsh stopped several times to inspect curbs, brick-work, and pavement, some of which has been heaved up by mature trees— and to get a first-hand look at how his liaisons throughout the city can identify problems and order up fixes in real time.

The NEW Boston initiative— shorthand for Neighborhood Engagement Walks— has already covered about half of the 850 miles of city-owned streets and sidewalks, according to Dan Manning, the city’s director of the Mayor’s Office of Civic Engagement.

“It’s in pretty good shape,” said Manning when asked to assess the overall condition of the city’s infrastructure. “We’ve had 3,000 cases over 507 miles so far, and a lot of them, about 1800 cases, are already closed.”

But there’s always new trouble around every tree pit, hydrant and curb cut, most of them nuisance items like heaving pavement, loose bricks, and road signs obscured by foliage.

As he walked along Tuttle Street, the mayor pointed to a yellow “SLOW” sign that was partly blocked by hanging branches. “This slow sign, we can’t trim the tree back because it’s on private property, but we can certainly redesign the sign or put it in a new place,” he said. “This is more of an assessment to see what we need to do and then we can add these items to capital projects if we need to.

“It’s a better way to deliver services; it’s a coordination of service,” said Walsh. “Oftentimes there can be a frustration level because you have two or three different agencies involved and if they’re not talking to each other, it slows a project down. We’re stressing that in cabinet and department head meetings. We want the civic engagement office— when we’re talking about ISD or public health or whatever’s going on— we want everyone to know what’s going on.”

Alec Bonelli, a Savin Hill native who works as Walsh’s liaison in Dorchester’s District Three, carries a tablet loaded with two mobile apps that help him navigate the NEW system. One is called CityWorker, an enhanced version of the CitizenConnect app that the public can download and use to report and track complaints to City Hall. The other app, Runkeeper, helps Bonelli and other mayoral aides track their walk route; it even counts their calories.

Bonelli says that residents are invited to join the walks— which are publicized in advance on the city’s website (cityofboston.gov/calendar/newboston.asp).

City Councillor Frank Baker, who joined Saturday’s walk-through, praised the idea of the street-by-street audit. He said that it helped residents who might not otherwise plug into City Hall in person to get acquainted with the mayor’s staff. “There’s nothing like getting out on the streets and understanding what you’re supposed to be responsible for,” said Baker.

Manning said that there is also a very practical rationale for the canvassing: The data collected from the walks will help city department prepare their budgets for capital improvements. “Folks can join the liaisons as they’re out walking and it’s a good opportunity to talk to us about anything. It’s pretty much walking office hours.”

For Walsh, having his staff fan out across the city might also help take the weight off of his personal complaint box. The former state rep used to get front-door visits from constituents, who would sometime ring his buzzer or slip a note into his mailbox with quality-of-life requests.

That’s changed a great deal since his inauguration last January.

“I haven’t gotten that many complaints,” said Walsh, when asked if his Savin Hill neighbors still come calling. “I’m never home so they don’t get to see me. I leave at like 5 in the morning and I’m home at 10 at night.”

Baker chimed in with a laugh: “He sends them to me.”

Walsh said he hopes that part of the message delivered by the attention to detail at the street level is that neighbors also have a role to play. “I see trash in the gutter and stuff like that bothers me. We’re also trying to make people aware; it doesn’t hurt to clean up your part of the sidewalk. Go out and sweep in front of your house and clean the gutter. You can’t depend on the city to do everything.”