Bristol City Council Smartphone Application
As an ever increasing portion of the population are owners and active users of smartphones, Bristol could benefit from the implementation of an official 'app'.
This application could have numerous functionalities with benefits for both citizens and the Council itself:
- Issue reporting: potholes, abandoned vehicles, damaged structures, street lights. Users can upload the location of the incident and a picture and the Council can manage more efficiently track city-wide issues from a singe database and update on progress.
- Quick access to information: Parking, landmarks, venues, public toilets, public transport, cycling lanes, bin collection etc.
- Management of council tax bills, pay fines, track planning applications and other end-user services.
Why the contribution is important
Having a Bristol Council smartphone app will provide a platform to allow citizens to access services in a quicker and more efficient manner, search for information and report issues they encounter in their city. The Council can keep users informed of resolution progress via e-mail/SMS thus creating a more community-oriented environment.
In parallel, by having a single referential database and input mechanism the Council could integrate and manage its internal services more efficiently. Tracking, reporting and allocating internal resources to solve issues could be optimised in many ways.
The actual cost of such an IT environment is not forbidding in this current economic climate, as smartphone app development is a mainstream industry.
Also, this could form a baseline for other opportunities such as identifying patterns in where damages occur city-wide, trends in user searches and more frequent ideas discussions.
by user830738 on December 15, 2013 at 08:15PM
Posted by user428889 December 17, 2013 at 09:56
The council already has an app which provides some of this functionality:
Download this from itunes or Google Play
http://lookinglocal.gov.uk/site/tech/smartphones.html
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Posted by user830738 December 17, 2013 at 18:57
The functionality this app offers would be ideal, however it doesn't appear to be officially distributed by the council. I couldn't find it anywhere on the website.
What would be beneficial, I believe, would be something more along the lines of Birmingham.
https://itunes.apple.com/[…]/id592763504
Cheers
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Posted by user340884 December 18, 2013 at 20:51
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Posted by user225326 December 18, 2013 at 21:57
One key thing which I think Parkus spots is that an openly accessible issue tracking database should be available by web interface and app to show you the progress of issues you report by any method and allow you to provide further input. That seems to me fundamental to any organisation trying to offer good customer service today but no-one at BCC seems committed to it yet.
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Posted by user338616 December 19, 2013 at 13:09
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Posted by user830738 December 19, 2013 at 19:32
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