If you\u2019ve ever been on a walk and spotted a gaping pothole in your street or some graffiti on a building, chances are it made you angry. At the very least, you probably hoped the city had plans to fix the problem. Or you may have taken action yourself and either called or emailed the city to report the issue. However, city officials might not have responded with the urgency you wanted, whether it was because your call or email wasn\u2019t answered or they were using an outdated spreadsheet-based system to process a work order.<\/p>\n
That scenario is exactly what MaintStar<\/a> is trying to eliminate. We create technology solutions that are meant to drive operational efficiency for small towns and large cities, so they\u2019re more responsive to their citizens. And most importantly: we want to improve citizen engagement through mobile apps that make it fast and simple to report problems.<\/p>\n Citizen engagement is a big issue for most cities today, and it\u2019s a two-way street: citizens want to feel more engaged with their community, and need to feel their city leaders are listening to them, while municipalities and cities are seeking to connect more closely with residents and become better at responding to their needs.<\/p>\n One of the reasons we\u2019re a Microsoft CityNext<\/a> partner is that we know that Microsoft is committed to improving citizen engagement worldwide. We were especially excited when we learned Microsoft was starting to focus on serving municipalities with populations under 100,000 \u2013 exactly the kinds of cities we were looking to get into. That\u2019s why it was a natural fit for us to partner with Microsoft on Mobile Citizen, our mobile app that citizens can use to better connect with their city leaders.<\/p>\n Mobile Citizen<\/a>, which can be downloaded to any Android or Apple smartphone, empowers citizens to take action and quickly notify the proper public works departments of non-emergency infrastructure incidents or problems. For example, citizens that notice streetlight outages or flooded intersections can open the app, take a picture of the light or street, and submit the image through the app. Once the item is submitted, the app automatically processes the photo and GPS location of the incident and sends it to the MaintStar Service Request System, which is based on Microsoft SQL Server database software and hosted on Windows Server.<\/p>\n Within seconds, a city employee receives the report and a work order is created. An automatic reply is sent to the citizen who submitted the report, and subsequent emails are sent when the work order is created and the incident is resolved by the city. It\u2019s a seamless process, designed to shorten the time it takes for cities to address infrastructure issues.<\/p>\n Although we\u2019re still in the process of rolling out the app into new places, we\u2019re already seeing great success in cities like Pleasanton, California<\/a>, Alameda County, California, the Merrimack Valley area of Massachusetts and Seminole County, Florida.<\/p>\nThe need for better engagement<\/h4>\n
Empowering citizens to take action<\/h4>\n