Cities, counties, towns, and boroughs . . . YouTown doesn’t stop there.  Departments within government agencies (such as emergency services, economic development, health department, etc.) have plenty of news of their own!  Departments can sign up with YouTown for an instant mobile connection to citizens, publishing updates, services, and maps to provide maximum customer service and transparency.

The Land Use Department in Will County, IL recently signed up and is keeping citizens informed about meetings, agendas, events, announcements, and more — all pulled together in the YouTown app and updated in real-time.  Derek O’Sullivan, Assistant Director at the Department, discussed the app on a local radio station last week.  He praised YouTown for providing a way for citizens to “engage” with the Department and get the latest updates on the go.

The show’s host said that people “always feel disconnected with their governments”, partly because they don’t go out of their way to find out what’s going on.  Because of this, it’s important for agencies to be “extra aggressive” in bringing information to citizens in a simple, convenient format.  Will County Land Use Department is using the app for this purpose, and O’Sullivan predicted:

As more and more people become aware of [YouTown], I think the governments will jump on it.

 

The Department was recently honored with the Public Integrity Award, presented by the American Society for Public Administration, in recognition of outstanding “openness and transparency”.  The mobile app is just one more way for the Department to continue going the extra mile to reach citizens.  “We’re publishing the same information that’s on our website and social media feeds,” said O’Sullivan, “but now it’s at people’s fingertips.”

We’ve already received interest from communities like Melbourne, Australia and Elmbridge Borough in Surrey, England.  Can’t wait to watch as agencies in Australia and the UK apply mobile government to their own unique situations.  YouTown is versatile and can be used so many different ways.  Bringing new countries and cultures to the platform will benefit everyone as we share ideas and strategies for better communication between agencies and citizens.

Of course, the Australian government has been working hard to meet many of the recommendations presented back in 2010 by the Gov 2.0 Taskforce, which included “making public sector information more accessible” and “requiring agencies to engage online”.  Hmm, there’s an app for that . . . and now ANY agency can signup and go mobile in a matter of minutes — for free!

Agencies in the UK are certainly exploring new options for communicating with the public as well.  A recent article about citizen engagement in the UK, though social media was the main focus, touched on the key benefits of Gov2.0  tools in reviewing the efforts of some local agencies: “improving service delivery,” “reducing costs,” “improving the citizen experience,” and “gaining deeper insight into citizens’ most pressing needs.”  Yup, that pretty much sums up what we do here at DotGov!

Welcome, Australian and UK agencies.  We’re honored to be part of your Gov2.0 journey!  Download the app today from iTunes or the Android market, and get your city mobile.

Well, that was fun.  We started the week off with a missing app!  Yeah, YouTown fell out of the app store for a bit.  After going through a whole new review process we have the app back in the store and ready for download.  The catch?  You need to download the new app if you want your app to be updated with Retina support and future upgrades.  The goods news is that we now support Retina on the iPhone!  This means YouTown has never looked so good!  We also launched a couple key features for this version:

• in-app browser support
• improved text processing

The in-app browser support is going to allow us to do a lot of fun things with the application moving forward.  We already have plans to implement web forms and other components.  If you are interested in these or other additional features, please be sure to go Pro!

We are continuing to improve how we process your data.  We want it to look perfect when a citizen views it on their mobile device.  The challenge is that not all feeds are alike.  And several need a little cleaning up.  This update included some improvements that gives us the ability to grab text from the original source that doesn’t always get included in the RSS feed.

Current users: If you have banner ads or other links to the app in the iTunes store, please update those with this link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/youtown/id398168697

Last summer, YouTown was honored at the White House and named a “Champion Of Change”.   Today we are excited to share with you that Government Technology Magazine has named our CEO Michael Riedyk one of their “Top 25”.

“Since 2002, we’ve dedicated the March issue of Government Technology to 25 people who cut through the public sector’s infamous barriers to innovation – tight budgets, organizational inertia, politics as usual, etc. – to reshape government operations for the better. This year, we honor an eclectic group of individuals from government, academia and the private sector who share a willingness to challenge convention and find new answers to long-standing issues. Congratulations to our 2012 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers.”

On this list are popular Gov 2.0 greats like Jennifer Pahlka, Bryan Sivak and groups of awesome people like the CrisisCommons Co-Founders and the Code for America Fellows.

“This came very unexpected and it is a great recognition for the whole team behind YouTown. Our goal is to help further the cause of open government and open data.  With the White House Champion of Change Award last year and now the Government Technology Top 25 recognition, it certainly is an important validation for us that we’re on the right track and that people think we’re working on something valuable. From the feedback we get from cities and counties using YouTown, we actually see that it changes government and the way way citizens interact with them.” – Michael Riedyk

One of the important updates we rolled out this month was the ability to reload your map feeds within the admin.  We published our update frequencies recently to help you understand how often we pull new information from your map feeds. However, there are times when you want to make a change to a Google Map for example, and would like to see those changes reflected in real-time.  So we added the “Reload” button to help you do just that.

We made several performance changes to our databases.  This should make the admin area even faster and smoother than before.

We added CSV and XML import support for maps.  We also added custom XML fields to our maps modules as well. Both open data formats allow you to simply upload a file with address information, for instance with school locations or city facilities, which is automatically converted into a map.  Don’t need GIS skills required to push your maps to YouTown!

CSV upload functionality was added to our Events module.  You can also simply link to a CSV file that is hosted online.  This will be great for organizations that utilize Trumba or Google Calendar.  Publishing a public CSV link is easy to do with many online calendar applications.

We are getting closer to launching push notifications!  We have been testing this feature and as always, are still interested in hearing your feedback.  If you have any ideas as to how you want push notification implemented, please let us know!

Well, it happened.  People wanted to start paying us for more options.  The most requested feature was having the ability to put an agency’s brand on the app.  For some, having the app in the app store is an important part of their digital strategy.  So starting now, our mobile platform is available in a Pro version.  This premium version gives you…

• Custom splash screens
• Priority support
• Unique App in the iTunes and Android markets (Blackberry coming)
• Custom mobile domain (http://m.mycity.gov)
• Language localization
• Priority updates to app versions

Hundreds of agencies are learning how they can make neighborhoods safer for our kids through the efforts of the Keep Kids Alive Drive 25 organization.  An now, these agencies can  add news, events, and even maps about their “KKAD25″ campaign and push them out to their citizens’ mobile devices.

Carol has been using DotGov’s free YouTown application for a variety of purposes like publishing services, maps and news.  What is also really remarkable is how she has been using the application in emergencies.  When Hurricane Irene came knocking on their door earlier this year, Carol needed a way she could push information, especially spatial information, out to the public and to agency personnel.  She launched a revolutionary program in Morris County called McUrgant.  McUrgant is Shared Emergency Information Network  that is set up managed by the county but is available for all the dozens of municipal and local agencies in the county.  Talk about shared services!  The county conducts training for the cities –which is why I was there.

Carol asked me to speak briefly after one of her training meetings about YouTown.  It was great to share our company story with so many folks who had already heard about or were using YouTown, but had never met any of us from the team.  As always, the feedback, the questions, and yes, the feature suggestions were all great and I can’t wait to get back already.

As if the first meeting wasn’t productive enough, Carol had me meet with members from the Morris County GIS team.  Steve and Janice helped me understand even better, how critical it is for us as a company to focus on creating technology that fits the role of the professional, and not just strictly the data format.  So context really matters and we want to translate that lesson into better tools for our users.

My final day was spent with an unruly bunch of webmasters from around the region.  I say unruly because Carol was quick to let me know that they were pretty laid back.  I found them to be a delightful bunch.  She was right, they were pretty relaxed, but the questions, the discussions…they just kept coming.  Thank goodness I took good notes!  From this group, I was reminded of how true it can be that one agency not far from another, can be at two very different locations on the technology timeline but can still have exactly the same needs.   For example, it doesn’t matter if you have a GIS department or if you don’t even own GIS software.  Chances are you are trying to figure out how to do what Ushahidi does.   Speaking of Ushahidi, I enjoyed taking off my DotGov hat and putting on my dusty Crisis Mapper hat (it is actually a grey fedora to be precise) and talking about the power of the Ushahidi and crowd-sourcing opportunities out there.

Thanks Carol and Jamie for the warm hospitality and seemingly unlimited supply of great discussions and laughs. It was a trip that ended too quickly and I can’t wait to return. Next stop on my Tour of The DotGovs – Texas!

Trumba,  a Seattle-based web calendar solution provider, and YouTown will be working together to make the publishing of event information — both online AND mobile — easier than ever.

Governments that use Trumba to power their web calendars will now enjoy the convenience of having that information automatically pushed through their YouTown account, disseminating it to citizens in a mobile format.  This will make it easier for residents to access their local events, schedules, directories, and other info via the web or their mobile device, while requiring less effort on the part of gov agencies who are utilizing both Trumba and YouTown.  Employees may also benefit by having mobile access to their agency’s event information.

The city of Seattle already uses Trumba’s online calendar solution which is seamlessly embedded in their events webpage. Take a look: http://seattle.gov/calendar/default.htm

This new partnership will save you time and effort by creating seamless communication between your ONLINE calendars and your MOBILE calendars.  We’re embracing the opportunity to work in conjunction with Trumba, making it easier for you to keep your residents and visitors up-to-date on community happenings.

Dan Hickman, CEO at Trumba, explains that mobile calendars are essential for a public that is coming to expect on-the-go access to all their information (including local events).  ”Calendars represent critical time-sensitive information that is constantly changing from day to day, making it important to provide quick and easy access on the go,” he said.  Dan expects the partnership with YouTown to benefit Trumba’s customers as well, for agencies that want to “go mobile,” but not just for calendaring.  ”They want a mobile app that gives a complete picture of their organization where events are just part of the puzzle,” he explained.  ”Partnering with YouTown provides a complete solution that integrates calendars alongside other important community information.”

Both Trumba and YouTown provide an interactive avenue for engaging the public, a strong focus within many agencies striving for open and accessible government.  The partnership will be welcome news for cities and counties seeking efficient and effective connection with citizens.