For all the talk about egovernment, gov20, mobile service delivery, sometimes we forget to step back and say –
“what is the goal?”
And truly the goal of these innovation is making it easier for citizens to get the services they desire.
That’s why I love this new service delivery vehicle created by City of Boston – The Service Delivery Food Truck.
-Think about it – a food truck is much cheaper than physical space.
-It goes where citizens are instead of forcing citizens to look for government.
-It offers serendipity – people don’t wake up and say “I want to register to vote” but they may see the city hall food truck, be interested, and then engage.
They have a great menu of the ‘top tasks’ most citizens want like:
-Paying a Parking Tickets
-Signing up for snow alerts
-Register to Vote
-Get a Recycling Bin Decal
Food trucks have reinvented food in most urban areas with lower up-front costs bringing in new people to food industry with wildly new creative ideas.
I think the same will be true of city service food trucks. I hope this catches on in cities across the country.
**Bonus points – the only thing I’d love more is do open data version of food trucks. As a city say – deer future service delivery food truck person, I’ll pay you $2 per citizen task delivered. We won’t build our own food trucks, we want you to on top of our tasks/data. You take all of up-front risk/cost, be innovative in your marketing/set-up, and go for it**
Cool idea!