The city of Boston has always exerted vigorous efforts to raise the level of services offered to citizens and meet their needs as required. Decades ago, the municipality launched a 24-hour hotline service to facilitate service provision or reporting. But over time, Boston officials noticed that the hotline was not serving citizens properly nor fulfilling its desired purpose, which called for new and more innovative solutions. Driven by Boston’s conviction of the important and complementary role of city employees, it launched a new app aimed at harnessing modern technology to support the communication center and enhance communication between smartphone users and entities implementing services inside the city.
BOS:311 app achieved great success. The volume of service requests received by the city service program rose by 35% between 2010 and 2013 due to increased requests submitted by mobile phone users. On another note, communication through social media had a positive impact on the relationship between the government and its citizens. Citizens Connect posts on Twitter all unfulfilled service requests and tweets about successfully resolved problems.
The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM) has formed a strategic partnership with the Department of Innovation and Technology and local tech company Connected Bits to launch an updated version of BOS:311, first released in 2009 and dubbed Citizens Connect. The fourth and updated version of the app was released in 2015 by relying on GPS technology that enables city residents to send photos and alerts through their mobile phones to reveal any issues in public spaces that should be properly addressed as quickly as possible by the responsible entities. This innovative mechanism has enhanced the city’s efficiency in dealing with complaints and reducing intensive efforts when responding to non-emergencies, not to mention encouraging citizens who put time and effort to report problems.
The updated app includes a new feature, street balance, enabling citizens to create their own accounts and get recognition for their frequent participation in the service request system. Participants are also invited to join special programs aimed at promoting civic participation. Users start by taking a picture that shows a malfunction or damage and sending it to the responsible entities through their smartphones. By merging the mobile app and the support app launched in 2012, it is now possible to handle requests effectively by escalating the issues to the concerned staff directly. Once the maintenance work is completed, employees can take pictures of the site and send them directly to the citizen who initially posted the photo and who can react to the employees’ efforts by using various emojis.
