For many years technology has been influencing how local governments do their job. Sometimes, it is believed to be able to solve urban problems in a magical way. “Let’s make a city application!” is a call which sounds especially appealing to these city officials who has just discovered the digital world. Such an approach is usually doomed from the start. What seems to be more effective, is “bottom-up” approach, which includes creating applications not only by officials but also in a tight cooperation with residents, activists, volunteers, local start-up community.
Just imagine: tens of thousands of residents begin their day with your application… They get a news stream from a city hall, can communicate with you and check all required information on city hall services. Sounds like a dream for every city official.
Fascinated by their new smartphones and their capabilities, officials hold meetings for creating specification of their perfect application. For countless hours they discuss and add new features, but sometimes they forget to consult the idea with residents — future users of an app. Then comes public procurement and significant amount of public money is usually spent. Nobody bothers to consult with residents or to ensure the code will be developed as an open source.
The next step is disappointment: the application becomes available in Google Play or App Store, but instead of appearing in the “top grossing” section, only very few downloads happen… The application intended for residents of a big city is installed only by few hundreds of users.
After tremendous amounts of money and time have already been wasted, it is time for the assessment: what and why did go wrong? The naked truth is that fighting for smartphone users attention is a difficult task. The research showed that “consumers are spending over 85 percent of their time on their smartphones using native applications, but the majority of their time — 84 percent — is spent using just five non-native apps”.
There is not much place left for city applications, isn’t it?
Only few can be successful in fighting for remaining 15 percent, and local governments aren’t usually in this group. However, it doesn’t mean that local governments should abandon their plans for developing apps. There is a smart approach to creating mobile solutions — on a small scale, efficiently, iteratively, in cooperation with residents, hacktivists, NGOs, start-ups. In such approach, building an app is not a goal by itself, it’s rather an opportunity to solve city problems with the support of many stakeholders outside the city hall.
This way we are trying to approach the process of building applications in Gdansk. What have we learned so far?
- Use open source, share your code. We insist on our contractors to work with open source solutions and share the code with us, because we don’t like to be depended. The open source software guarantees us flexibility — the app can be changed anytime we want and with anybody we want. We share the code on Github.
2. Less is more. Try not to extend specifications and look for agile specifications. Maybe at the beginning there is no need for apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone? Maybe a responsive web-application would be sufficient? You save time & money, and when the idea gains publicity, you can consider building iOS/Android app.
3. Engage external stakeholders. Don’t make secrets — communicate your idea for an app to residents, NGOs, hacktivists in the city. Arrange meetings, discussions, listen to feedback. Work the specification together out. Don’t hesitate to drop the idea if it doesn’t catch interest.
4. Seek for cost-cutting. Not necessarily you have to buy an app from a big, expensive IT company. There are alternative ways. In Gdansk we engaged in cooperation with NGOs supporting open data programs in cities (Fundament foundation), Code for Poland and competitions promoting grass-root coding (Bihapi).
5. Open your data. Publishing city data-sets in open, machine-readable formats (at least .csv) can be inspiring for coders and start-ups who may develop their own apps. It may help develop local economy based on knowledge.
Four applications are worth mentioning here.
The BAND application (Polish abbreviation for a ‘bank of trees’), available at www.gdansk.pl/band, allows its users to identify parts of the city in which new trees should be planted. Just visit the website, select a location, choose preferred tree species, provide your contact details and that’s it. The application became popular among residents of Gdansk and few other local governments talked with us about running the app in their cities. We decided to develop it as a web-application and this open source solution was developed by the Fundament foundation for less than 2000 EUR. In the 2nd half of 2015 we received about 300 requests for new trees and now, when the concept was proved, we consider further development of features, like better CMS for officials or iOS/Android versions.
Wyrzuc.to (ThrowIt.Away) — all data on garbage collection on an interactive map. At first, the web-app was developed by volunteers, which was quite slow process, but finally — it works. The application encouraged our unit responsible for garbage collection to improve its process of designing routes for garbage trucks. Further development is expected.
Zdążuś. City applications are not only those built directly by a local government. Quite often independent applications do their job. In Gdansk it is the case of Zdążuś, the app for checking real-time schedules for your nearest bus stop. This simple but useful application was awarded with the special prize of the Mayor of Gdansk during BIHAPI competition. To date, Zdążuś was downloaded more than 5000 from Google Play.
Gdańsk Numerek. Some time ago we opened data on waiting lines in the city hall. The data was available on a website and as an XML file, however — no iOS application. Suddenly, Eliasz Sawicki approached me once during Code for Poland — Tricity meeting, asking about details on the data. Just two weeks later I got a message on Facebook from Eliasz: the app is ready!
Sometimes it happens this way! :-)
Written by: Krzysztof Garski, Mayor’s Office in Gdańsk
