In a survey of users, city staff found that all but one respondent likes Golden’s YourGov application for dealing with non-emergency problems around town.
The online program, which allows citizens to report problems they see and then track the city’s progress on fixing the problem, was launched Oct. 1. Since then, GIS Coordinator Quint Pertzsch said, the site, which can be accessed from the Hot Topics list on the city’s online homepage at http://ci.golden.co.us, has generated about 20 reports a month.
“I wish it would be used more,” he said, “but we probably haven’t advertised it enough. I’d like to see at least one call a day.”
City Public Works Director Dan Hartman told the City Council on Feb. 10 that reports range from complaints about graffiti to barking dogs to malfunctioning traffic signals.
“This is exactly what we wanted this application to do,” he said. “We want citizens to be our eyes.”
The program was developed by Cartegraph, a Dubuque, Iowa-based municipal technology provider. Pertzsch said he serves on some of the company’s advisory committees and is often asked if Golden will test its new applications.
“This one was pretty good right out of the box,” he said. “We asked for a couple of minor tweaks, such as adding the disclaimer that this for non-emergency issues only to the iPhone application.”
YourGov can be used via the Web or mobile phone. One drawback that should be fixed soon, Pertzsch said, is that the application is only available now for iPhone users.
“That alienates the smartphone users,” he said. “I can’t use it from my phone because I have an Android phone.”
He said an application for Android phones should be released in May. A link to find the iPhone application is available on the YourGov page.
To use the program from a computer, a person must have Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in on the computer. The city’s YourGov site provides a link to a free download of that program. A link for Citizens must create a profile in order to use the YourGov application, using a valid e-mail address. By clicking on Add Request, users can report the address or choose a location on a map, select an issue and identify the date when the problem was noticed. As soon as the YourGov coordinator sees a report, it is channeled to the appropriate city staff person. The city aims for a one-to-two day response time to deal with the problem.
“We were already doing this kind of work,” Pertzsch said. “If someone would call to notify us of something, or contacted their council representative, we’d work to fix the problem. This gives people another avenue for that, one that we hope will get the issue resolved quicker because it doesn’t have to go through multiple people to get to the right place.”
Pertzsch said people do report problems that aren’t within the city’s authority to solve.
“For example,” he said, “if someone reports a pothole on Highway 6, that’s CDOT’s problem. But we send the information to them.”
One feature that YourGov provides is that citizens can track progress on solving problems they report. Those who create user profiles on the YourGov site can go to the My Requests link and see what activity was assigned to the problem, along with any notes city staff have made about the issue and the date the issue was closed. They can also choose All Requests to see what has happened with reports made by anyone else.
“I think this has made us more efficient,” Pertzsch said. “We’re aware of small problems before they become bigger problems. We can send a crew out to patch a small pothole before it gets big enough to damage people’s cars.”
One benefit of the program, Hartman told the council, is that city staff is using the application.
“We didn’t expect that,” he said. “Now, when they’re out and about on city business, if they see an unrelated problem, they’ll pull out their cell phones and call it in.”