As the mayor of a city of just under 60,000 people, I’m always thinking about how I can make my community a better place for the people living in it.
I love my city and I love the people in it, so I do my best to stay as connected with them as possible. Every day, I go for my morning coffee downtown, and I just walk. I walk, and I walk, and I talk to as many people as I can before I get cooped up in my office for the next however-many hours in meetings.
As I talk to the residents of the city, I try my best to get a feel for what our local government can better do to serve them.
You know what I hear most often from them?
They don’t talk about the marginal increases in health insurance taxes.
They don’t mention the changes by the local city council school committee.
They don’t bring up national politics and controversial subjects.
It turns out, what they mention the most often are everyday issues, like fixing a pothole, replacing a burnt out street light, or cleaning up some graffiti. It’s nice, to be honest – just to be able to talk about and help fix everyday, normal issues.
But what I realized from my morning coffee conversations with my fellow residents, was that they didn’t know how to report simple city issues unless I showed up.
I don’t blame them. When they would ask me “Where am I supposed to report this?” I always responded, “Call our number” or “Just e-mail my office at _____.”
But they always seemed to wait to talk to me in person again. I realized that I had become a sort of communication bottleneck between them and the city.
That led me to realize that the biggest issue I wanted to improve city wide was the very thing I enjoyed doing the most every morning – the simple communication between residents and their city government. I wanted to replicate the simplicity of my personal visits by creating a system for residents to easily create a dialog with our government staff – the same way they could talk to me while I was getting my morning coffee.
I got down to researching new ways for simple, consolidated communication for the city. The most popular solution that I kept running into was to create a 311 telephone system – a non-emergency number for all sorts of municipal services.
Big cities all across the US used this system, from Boston to Austin to Anaheim to Vegas – but immediately, I ran into new issues concerning the 311 system in our smaller city.
- The logistics of creating a centralized phone system created issues with neighboring cities.
- It wasn’t the most attractive form of getting the younger generation involved in their local community.
- Lastly and most importantly, it was really expensive to implement. Putting together a comprehensive call center took a ton of training (imagine trying to turn every employee into a street-by-street map expert of a city) and a lot of resources to keep that whole staff on payroll.
Ask any local government official – you can be as well-intentioned as you want to be, as caring a leader as possible – but every single thing you do comes down to the money.
You don’t have to be an economist to understand that when your healthcare budget goes up by 12% and taxes only go up 2% – something’s gotta give. 85% of our budget goes to police, schools and fires – and everything else had been devastated by cutbacks.
Every time we make cutbacks, you always want to imagine that you find some extravagant cost that screams “Wasteful! Cut me!” but we all know that’s just wishful thinking.
Every cutback feels I’m cutting off yet another limb of an already financially-struggling community.
But that’s the life of a government official. Trying to find ways to help your community while finding room in the budget to do it – that’s the never-ending struggle.
Luckily, I was introduced to an innovative platform that not only fixed the disorganized communication issues for my city, but helped build completely new streams of revenue to help fund future projects.
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“Think Facebook Meets Local Government.”
After months and months of research about possible solutions to the issue of inexpensive, simple and reliable communication for my city, I came into contact with an old government friend, Jerry, who had retired and moved back to his ancestral homeland of Hungary with his family.
We kept email correspondence from time to time, and I mentioned my newest “unbeatable” project. After a few days, all he responded with was “I know something that might help. Let’s schedule a call.”
I waited until the next week to learn what he had to share with me.
“So what was this big solution that couldn’t be typed into an email, Jerry? Something illegal?” I joked.
He laughed. “It was too much information for an email. I wanted to tell you about it in-person – or as in-person as possible.”
He went on, “There’s a communication system here that has worked wonders. And it’s all done on an app on your phone.”
“An app?” I answered. Already I felt my technology-related blood pressure rise.
“An app. All communication between residents of the city and the local government – all done in the simplicity of an app. It’s called Smart City by Interticket [link to sales page]. It’s amazing.” I only wish this existed while I was still in government.”
“How does it work?”
“Think Facebook meets local government. If you have anything you want to report to the local district’s government – whether it’s a pothole, some graffiti, a broken tree – you can literally take a picture, enter the location, and it automatically sends it to the associated branch that handles that kind of problem. I couldn’t believe how well it worked and how easy it was. I showed it to my ten-year-old daughter and she successfully reported a stray dog that she saw for fun just to try.
“The local district even sends us personalized messages that relate to us. My family must be in a separate group for just the residents on my street. I got a notification about trash pickup on our street next weekend, but no messages about other streets,” he went on.
I was a bit speechless. This was exactly what I was looking for.
“But that’s not even the craziest part. Apparently, this app will be used as blockchain-based local currency as well. I’ve been getting push notifications from the local government updating me about ways they are implementing new features beyond communication. Apparently, they’re starting some sort of city-branded credit card backed by local money – right on your phone.”
He finished, “All I can say is, I know it sounds too good to be true, but you should definitely look into it. This might be the future of how all local governments run.”
I found myself on Smart City’s website [link] seconds after the call.
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The Future of Local Government Management Systems
Jerry wasn’t joking about two things – one, it sounded too good to be true. Two, this app really might be the future of local government.
After doing some research, it seemed Smart City could not only consolidate local communication into one system, but it was able to perform a ton of other services as well:
[insert picture]
- Fast and Easy Communication and Reporting
- Whether it’s a broken tree limb, fixing a pothole, removing dead animals, noise complaints, or parks and recreation concerns – you can report location-based messages directly to the associated branch of government
- Push messages
- Send direct messages and push notifications to local residents about upcoming events, voting reminders, or warnings for emergency cases
- Citizen Grouping / Voting and Survey
- Create segmented groups based on location or other factors and send specific messages, personalized for them
- Send out surveys and voting reminders to keep better connected with your citizens
- Smart Wallet / Coupons / Vouchers
- Smart City’s App acts as a digital wallet that can store customizable city cards, ID cards, tickets, and more
- Customizable coupons can be issued directly to residents of the city to be used at local businesses
Does It Really Work?
As I mentioned earlier, I’m usually skeptical when it comes to technology. The whole platform seemed a little too good to be true, and a bit overwhelming, to be honest.
Nonetheless, I connected with Smart City’s dedicated support staff, and they explained it perfectly clearly. They worked with me to help install a system personalized just for our city into our local government network, and they were there with amazing back-end support whenever we needed it.
To begin with, we started out by installing a simple feedback module where local citizens could quickly and easily report any problems they might have, whether it was an abandoned car, a pothole, a burnt out light – anything. From there, the report went to the matching branch, and a work order was automatically made.
Communication has never been easier between residents and their local government.
Just like how most other technology feels to me – it felt like magic. I couldn’t believe how well the system worked.
Along with the reporting system, we installed a system to send out push messages to our citizen’s phones about warnings and special events going on.
It’s been about half a year since we’ve installed Smart City’s communication tools, and it’s been absolutely amazing – but that’s not even the best part.
Smart City’s app is designed to be customized to your city’s specific needs – and to create new streams of revenue while doing it.
The platform’s unique ability to act as a “blank slate system” for a variety of cities is what makes it truly special. Across the world, there have been successful cases of cities:
- building entire local currencies that can be used at local businesses to further stimulate and support the local economy
- creating localized app-based couponing systems to help poorer segments of the population
- Establishing innovative marketing and advertising features
- Hosting government-held events and managing from top to bottom by selling tickets through the dedicated platform
Smart City’s app is a blank canvas waiting to be painted on.
Once the app was in place, light bulbs started going off in my mind.
Last month, we installed a system that controls parking sales in our new parking lot downtown. Not only has it been much more organized and convenient through the app –
We’ve actually created a new stream of revenue for our local government by using Smart City.
With Smart City’s open-ended design and amazing back-end support, the sky’s the limit for the initiatives we can create for our local city.
I’m not kidding when I say this might be the future of creating a sustained economy in local cities.
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What Next?
Smart City has connected our community together like never before.
Now, communicating back and forth from residents to the government really is as easy as seeing your mayor down the street, grabbing a coffee.
Not only has Smart City helped our city achieve its goal of creating a more connected community – but it’s given us a blueprint to an endless source of ideas to further strengthen our city while creating new streams of revenue in the process.
If you’re someone in a leadership position in local government, you need to ask yourself what it’s costing you by not using Smart City.
What is it costing your city to use a dated and faulty communication system?
How much stress is it costing your officials as well as your citizens by not having an organized source of communication?
Smart City not only helped consolidate our communication needs into one easy-to-use app, but it’s also given our city completely new streams of revenue that would never before have been possible. Revenue that can be used on our parks, education, infrastructure, and health.
Don’t waste another second. Right now, trying out their system is completely free – but it might not be forever.
