One way Local Governments will use Politics4All

Mon. Aug. 25, 10:17pm EST

We know that there will be many new ways to use Politics4All as we move forward that have yet to be discovered. We are counting on our users to come up with innovative ways to employ our services. With that in mind, I'm going to explain an application that we came up with that will be very useful to local governments.

For the sake of this illustration, let's call our community Otisburg (remember the movie Superman?).

Okay, Otisburg's Communications Director puts the Mayor's profile on Politics4All and says to himself, "self, we could really use this in a creative way to communicate with our citizens." He then creates a group profile for Otisburg. On this profile, he lists the city's department heads, pertinent phone numbers, and updates of city news and events. He then goes into the search function and finds all users in Otisburg and invites them to join this group.

The Traffic Director wants to notify Otisburg's citizens that the right lane of Main Street is going to be closed and the speed limit will be reduced to 15mph in the work zone. When he sends out his update using Politics4All, each user following Otisburg will receive this notification on thier MyP4A page. If so connected, they'll also receive this update on their Blackberry or other PDA.

The city Sanitation Director wants to remind everyone that the upcoming Labor Day weekend will push trash pick-up to Tuesday instead of the normal Monday pick-up. He can send this update to everyone following Otisburg on Politics4All and they'll get it instantly.

The Otisburg Police Chief sends out an Amber Alert to all followers of Otisburg using Politics4All, and they get it, instantly.

Otisburg's Leisure Director gets confirmation that a groovy new band has agreed to perform at the Otisburg's "Battle of the Bands" and sends that to all of Otisburg's followers, instantly.

Otisburg's Finance Director seals the deal on a new manufacturing plant, meaning 500 new jobs. He uses Politics4All to inform the citizens of the good news, instantly.

There's a snow storm coming, and the School Superintendent sends out the school closings using Politics4All, and Otisburg's citizens get it on thier profile pages and Blackberry's, instantly.

As you can see, Politics4All has multiple uses. This application alone could revolutionize the way a municipal government communicates with it's citizens. Please think of other ways that Politics4All can be used and blog them here.

Comments

Jenci Spradlin Tue. Aug. 26, 12:56am EST#1

In my former life in local government, the real challenge wasn't "pushing" information to the public...it was "pulling" it from them, engaging them in the process and identifying new leaders, instead of relying on the same group year after year after year. It is easy from "inside the beltway" (even if that beltway is far-removed from Washington, DC) to believe that what you are doing is and should be of #1 importance to the citizenry; however, it is equally as easy to lose one's way when the aforementioned citizenry fail in their duty to keep government accountable for the choices made and the direction taken. A tool like Politics4All can help bridge both these disparities between the political and the public by giving the public a space for debate and idea-sharing, and allowing the political (elected officials) to tap into their various constituent groups to push information and to pull volunteers and elicit feedback and comment. The reality is, however, that the elected officials and other department heads (on a local level) won't necessarily think in terms of communications vehicles - rather farming it off to a communications department staffer who is already over-burdened or frustrated by the failure of the organization as a whole to think about such things when making decisions (until the public works crews are shutting down a road and someone asks if anyone bothered to inform the "public" about the road closure). In their mind, it's got to be simple, simple, simple and not a repeat of something that local organization is already doing on their own website. But, if you've got a tool that has a critical mass of citizens from a particular area blogging about and creating polls about and organizing around current local issues -- the local authorities and decision makers would be foolish to NOT participate. As anthropologist Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has."

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