"miCiudad" (myCity): Promoting Citizen Engagement to Improve Service Delivery in Cities

Abstract

This poster paper presents initial results of a research and development project that aims at promoting citizen engagement on city issues through a mobile application and a back-office solution. Through a mobile app, called MiCiudad (MyCity) citizens can report different kinds of issues affecting their neighborhoods or lives in the city; for example, they can inform about non-working traffic lights, garbage on the street, power cuts on a given sector, insecurity issues on a specific neighborhood, etc. Through the back-office solution, the system facilitates communication between local government authorities, private companies responsible for service delivery and community members. The solution assists in reporting service malfunctioning, that is often hard and messy for citizens, mainly due to many different channels available for such communication. Usually, each service provider offers its own channels to report problems, and the local government also provides some more -- e.g. 911, email, social media accounts, etc. The availability of so many channels causes losses in both ends; citizens tend to choose not to report issues bothering them, and as a consequence, private companies or the local government delay in detecting service malfunction. Both situations end in lack of service improvements.