Today, the City of Huntsville, Texas (www.huntsvilletx.gov) and eGov Strategies (website) announced the availability of the city’s comprehensive iPhone app to better connect residents and businesses with city government. It’s a uniquely innovative approach for a local government app that offers a wide range of city website content and services – uniquely designed for iPhone users.
“This solution takes all of the content and services that we’re actively managing on our web site – as well as social media content from Facebook and Twitter — and makes it available to mobiles users with no effort beyond downloading the app from the iTunes store. Free to the public, not only can our constituents take photos of Animal Control issues and report them through their phones, they can also find out about upcoming public meetings, get maps with detailed instructions on how to find city departments, or look up the phone number for a key city service, all from the easy-to-use eGov Mobile app,” stated Chris Vasquez, IT Manager for the City of Huntsville, Texas.
Powered by the eGov Mobile platform from eGov Strategies, the mobile solution leverages the eGov Manager website management platform so the city can easily update and manage content for the mobile app. Key features of the new mobile solution include:
Government information – Assisting users with department information, descriptions, maps, phone, fax and, access to website page information.
Public meetings – Providing key information for meetings today, 7 days, and 30 days out, with all the details.
News – Creating an accurate news information source straight from the city.
Events – Helping people plan and become more involved with all the information needed to plan calendars accordingly.
Report It – Putting eyes and ears on the streets, the city can proactively respond to issues in a variety of categories, while reducing foot traffic to the city offices.
Services – Helping constituents understand available services, the quick look-up feature provides an overview of services, important phone numbers, and detailed information for usage by patrons.
Social Media – Connecting social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and other social media postings quickly from the city, all in one location.
Photos – Providing a snap shot of city photos for viewing on phones.
Download Huntsville’s eGov Mobile application on the iTunes App Store by searching for “Huntsville”, “eGov” or “LaViaz”. You can also download the app via ITunes.
Pretty cool!
Huntsville is an awesome place – of course, it’s also my hometown 🙂
This app is amazing Ken! I can’t believe more cities haven’t implemented apps.
Very cool. Have other State and Local Governments tried this? Or is Huntsville the first?
Trevor – for state and local governments, I believe these are the only apps available in iTunes for local or state governments entities: Cities/Towns: Fishers IN; Huntsville TX; South Daytona FL; and States: Alabama; Arkansas, Oklahoma and Utah. Although I also don’t want to slight the efforts of DC, San Francisco and others who have a number apps available – they’re just not aggregated together for that specific city.
Nice. Thanks Ken.