Technology has long helped private enterprise do things faster, cheaper and better. Want to ship a package? Fed Ex has a site where you can ship your package, track it and even print labels. You can also figure out how much it will cost to ship your nephew his new Xbox without talking to a person. Have suggestions for new products or services? Businesses like ModCloth enable their customers to vote on which clothing items they will make available in their online store. The solution solves two problems – which items will sell quickly and won’t have to be discounted due to lack of demand and customer engagement. The bottom line, technology has the power to solve business problems.
What are some business problems that local government is faced with? According to a recent article in Washington Technology — state and local government officials are faced with cutting costs, improving constituent services and even increasing revenues. The article points out that IT departments in the state and local government are looking beyond traditional IT solutions to solve these problems.
In his first day memo, President Barack Obama wrote “Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions.” The idea of open government and civic engagement is not new, however. In the early 1800’s historian Alexis de Tocqueville said that nothing was more important in the early history of the United States than civic engagement as a way of connecting communities and building a government that would be key to the nation’s success. It is interesting that the concept of civic engagement seems to be the key to building a strong and successful government. Looks like not much has changed, at least philosophically, since the early days of our nation.
Walk down the street in any city, town, or county and most folks won’t be able to tell you what their local government is voting on in a given week or where exactly their tax money goes. They will be able to tell you all the things that they see are wrong in their neighborhood, such as a broken street light, potholes, problems with trash collection. And they’re likely to call any number of government employees to complain about it if they have time between shuttling their kids to soccer practice, working, or living their daily lives. Without a singular forum for public works issues, when local governments can communicate with constituents and citizens can communicate with the government, communication can break down between both sides resulting in inefficiency when numerous citizens report the same issue as well as the associated expense in man hours as well as dissatisfaction in government.
Fortunately we live in a world where technology can help to solve many of the problems that local governments face. Nick Grossman who runs the Open Planning Project for TOPP Labs (TOPP), an incubator for civic technology initiatives, recently participated in an open forum at MIT. He state that, “Government services are potentially a gateway…to civic engagement. It’s not just about politics and government, but about the city and how we use it.” The bottom line is that technological evolution has the power to transform the way that local governments do business on a day-to-day basis.
At PublicStuff we agree that technology has the power of technology to change government. We’re proud of our newest release due out later this month. It will provide governments and citizens better ability to engage, solve problems and increase the effective of municipal services. We look forward to sharing the details in the coming weeks and months.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Bringing Web 2.0 to City Government
The Public Technology Institute (www.pti.org) in July held a virtual summit discussing the need for and growth of applications for local government. The forum considered the role of Web 2.0 and mobile applications in delivering more efficient, more open government. Cities everywhere are expanding the services they offer online to residents in search of increasing efficiency and in hopes of delivering better service to constituents. And just as municipalities are becoming more web savvy, they are now also seeing an added challenge with demand for mobile access to their services.
Alan Shark, executive director of the Public Technology Institute, identifies some of the questions raised by cities in attempting to broaden their online citizen engagement. Common questions include how government can respond to constituents in a timely manner, how applications can be deployed in the face of constrained resources, and how mobile can become part of a city’s IT plan. While resident expectations for mobile access to government services continue to increase, cities need solutions that meet service expectations while not adding to their overall IT or budget burdens.
With help from PublicStuff, cities can quickly and cost-efficiently deploy the types of solutions their residents are seeking today. Residents can input service requests, map existing requests, and see what problems the city has already solved. With automated communications, PublicStuff increases information flow between government and residents without increasing the amount of work staff have to do. Available mobile applications also address resident demand for access to government while on-the-go with a solution that is ready for cities out-of-the-box and can be customized for a city without any work by city staff. The management-facing GovStuff solution provides a platform to improve communications with constituents while also reducing management overhead and work related to scheduling activities and updating staff, residents, and elected officials on the status of new, open, and completed projects.
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