How Governments are Utilizing Mobile App Development in Public Services
Mobile devices have emerged a significant accessory in recent years. Many important services are being leveraged by consumers through devices like mobile phones, tablets, e-reader, wearable, etc. There were 7.4 billion mobile devices around the world, with a global population of 7.2 billion in 2014, as per the data given by CISCO in the year 2015.
The government is utilizing mobile apps to serve people with public services more efficiently. Mobile apps engage rich mobile device portability and internet connectivity. Apps facilitate consumers with features like camera and geographical positioning system (GPS) that have simplified processes remarkably in recent years.
Rising Importance of Mobile Apps in Public Services
Mobile applications have significantly transformed the ways to deliver public services to citizens. Mobile-oriented functions can be identified under e-government functionaries and operated through electronic delivery of services. With mobile applications, Governments enable all-time access to a wide range of in-demand government services from respective departments anytime, anywhere.
A 21st-century citizen can get any information on his fingertips and this requires public agencies running by government authorities to be precise with the help of sophisticated resources providing data to the people. Organizations of all sizes are tracking the potential of mobile applications on the basis of different parameters. For example, if you could tell the government authorities about the number of potholes that spoiled your journey and ask them to get them fixed, how precise and informative are ways of leveraging public services? Although this can be done in Boston, Massachusetts by the citizens with the help of a mobile application called ‘StreetBump’. This application works using accelerometer and GPS data from mobile devices owned by citizens volunteering to spot potholes in their ways and report them.
Keep looking for things you might want to do through mobile apps is a way to find other potential applications by the app developers collaborating with the public sector organizations including government institutions. The proliferation of mobile devices has narrowed the digital divide efficiently by offering access to online services with government mobile applications. Increased accessibility of smart devices to conventionally underserved people has raised the prospects of providing them with required public services more effectively.
How Citizen-Oriented Apps are Transforming the Public Services
Citizen-oriented apps are generally subjected to external use. They are accessible to anyone requiring public services. Therefore, there is an essential need for such kind of mobile applications to be compatible across various devices people generally make use of. These apps indulge in an ‘anytime, anywhere’ approach of delivering public services to the citizens through an innovative, non-conventional, faster and decision-making process.
Citizen-oriented apps have become common and usable more than ever before. They have overcome the prevalence of enterprise-focused applications on many occasions as these apps are used as an additional transformative way to provide citizens with public services and involve the public in decision-making processes governed by the governments.
Types of Citizen-Oriented Apps Used for Delivering Public Services
There are different types of citizen-oriented apps governments use to provide their citizens with public services. Here they are;
Information & News Service Apps
These are the applications used to provide with the government’s services, updates and information related to individual citizens of their own use.
Client Services Apps
This type of apps is used for delivering ‘on the go’ services like transportation-related information of departments like the railways.
Crowdsourcing Apps
These are the apps that help government agencies to crowdsource the information from their citizens in an efficient & faster way.
Health & Safety Information Apps
Government health departments and ministries use such apps to provide citizens with end-to-end health services like to accumulate information on disaster assistance, drug shortages, HIV/AIDS, etc.
Educational Apps
Education is one of the biggest fields that has transformed dramatically due to the mobility transformation led by the governments in their respective countries.
Public Engagement Apps
Online complaint portals & apps have encouraged people to realize their rights as a citizen of a nation. They can collaborate with the governments to help them fix the problems that have not come to concern because of any particular reason.
Future of Public Services Using Mobile Apps by Governments
The future of citizen-oriented apps is full of transformations and next-level achievements. Here is how:
Enhance Public Services
Public agencies can help to develop and support citizen-oriented apps that enhance the public services they offer. Mobile service provision can be empowered to lessen an agency’s process costs.
Advanced Embedded Approach
Public agencies should consider an embedded approach to citizen-oriented apps by offering public services contextually. Due to such an approach, public agencies can embed their services in collaboration with other mobile services being used by citizens on general occasions.
Increased Availability of APIs for Citizen-Oriented Apps
Public agencies can play a significant role to reposit a large amount of data in a public domain using strong APIs as standard protocols to access the public data.
Conclusion
Application Programming Interface or API, a significant part of the mobile app development process, has enhanced the layering concept to deliver information in the context of public services. APIs are the standard protocols followed to access data from any external source such as a public agency. In such cases, these public agencies can assign a key that provides access to the information being provided through an application. Governments can take the help of a mobile app development company to develop citizen-oriented apps considering different purposes for their citizens.
