Earlier this year the Australian Government started talking about Gov 2.0 (as in Australian Government Web 2.0 Agenda). Back then I thought that it is an interesting concept and wondered how they were going to make it work when they cannot even make the eTax 2009 available for the Mac or online to be device independent.
So while the Australian Gov is trying to figure out this Web 2.0 business (hire me and I can tell you) the San Fancisco Gov has manage to absolutely kick butt. They have released the Open311 API.
So just to fill you in 311 is this great initiative by Govs world-wide to have a simple one-stop-shop for citizens to call. This means no 500 different numbers for the various departments and agencies, just one simple one. This can be done really well and really badly.
The Open311 API allows developers to create apps for the citizens to improve their interaction with the local gov. The example covers a situation where a developer could create an app which allows citizens to report pot holes. This app could be made very simple for the user. Using the camera of the phone the app could take the photo, use the GPS to pin-point the position, allow the user to input notes, capture masses of other statistics and open a new service request if one doesn’t exist. If the gov wanted to show citizens their progress they could provide the citizen with a personalised message at completion.
Benefit to the Government is that they
- save on having to constantly send assessors out for basic analyst,
- can capture trends,
- reduce calls to their contact centre,
- can connect with customers like never before
- citizens build the apps which they feel is needs i.e. user driven not gov driven, and
- it sends a clear progressive message to the voters.