APP FOR THE CITY

Admin. services, tourist

information, phone

directory at fingertips

Case of Ivano-Frankivsk

By Maksym Klyuchar

Ivano-Frankivsk

Long-term partner of UNDP Municipal

Governance and Sustainable

Development Programme

Population – 245 000

Administrative center in one of

the Ukrainian western regions

Initiative

• Partners: UNDP Ukraine & Regional Bureau and Ivano-

Frankivsk City Council

• Project submitted to the local contest for pool of ideas;

gets funding originally as a corruption reporting app

• Total budget (not only the app): 13 500 Euro

• Implementation of the project: May – December 2013

• Launch of the downloadable beta: May 2014

Before shaping the idea

• Work with municipality partners defining digitization of

services as a priority (work on offline services with UNDP

first)

• Launch of a regional competition for “IT for Anticorruption”

matched with demand coming from the city

• Elaboration of a hybrid idea – including three sections: (1)

advert for the city, (2) services for the city, (3)

anticorruption hotline and complaint mechanism

Shaping the idea

• Consultations with the city council, launch of 3 focus-

groups for the citizens to identify the preferences on

offered options

• The app developed by a private contractor selected

through a competitive process

• Poor developer advised from the beginning that multiple

iterations would take place

The actual contents at the finish line

iOs and Android app that enables the citizens to get

information about:

• the city, its local news, list of events;

• full contact data-base of local authorities, state bodies,

utilities, educational and medical institutions;

• methods of anticorruption actions;

• administrative services;

• possibility of sending of public requests,

applications, petitions or complaints.

Target group

• residents of Ivano-Frankivsk;

• legal entities;

• students of local universities and

colleges;

• tourists.

Number of smartphones and tablets used locally = 60 000

(approx 25% of city residents).

Trend-line = ~ 80 000 by end of 2014.

Plan for application downloads:

2014г. – 5 000. Currently – 1662 (282 iOS; 1380 - Android)

1. Expand the e-government toolkit utilized in the city

2. Foster reporting of corruption-related behavior

3. Equip citizens and guests with a functional and regularly

updated city phonebook (city council yellow pages)

4. Advertise the city sights to tourists

5. Enhance the public relations component

Goals propagated by local government

E-government

The application supplements existing e-government elements

in Ivano-Frankivsk:

• Official web-sites of the city council, mayor, executive

committee and its departments;

• Internet- and SMS-systems of informing about

administrative services and permit issuance;

• City council’s accounts in social networks;

• Internet-reception, a system of

supplying electronic requests, applications, and

complaints.

Countering corruption

Anticorruption tool

• Hotlines providing the users with all

contacts of anticorruption state bodies

or specialized agencies with direct

dial opportunities;

App structure

About Ivano-Frankivsk

Local governments

Institutions

Tourism

Services

Petitions and complains

Hotlines

Tourist information

The app presents useful information

for tourists on:

city history,

places of interest, architecture,

hotels, restaurants,

entertainment,

souvenir shops,

small photo-archive.

Contains contacts of some emergency services as well

Local authorities

Section presents full contact

information of local authorities,

structural departments of the city’s

executive committee.

Gives access to a database of

existing local regulations and their

drafts.

City yellow pages

Application has full contact data (phone numbers, e-mails,

web-sites, addresses, personal names, and mapping) of:

• all government bodies in Ivano-Frankivsk

• public utilities;

• hospitals;

• educational institutions;

• emergency services;

• and many others.

> 500 contacts.

Hotlines

List of all hotlines ran by law

enforcement bodies entrusted with

corruption prevention issues

+

Phone numbers of all

emergency services

Administrative services

Full information of administrative services (service cards) and

procedures for permit issuance. The status update function is

integrated into the tracking system of the municipality.

Functionality

synchronized with

electronic system of

Ivano-Frankivsk

Administrative Services

Center.

Petitions and Complains

Possibility to send an electronic application or request for

public information (in accordance with law). At any moment

every user may find out about the request consideration

status.

The section is

synchronized with

electronic document flow

system in Ivano-

Frankivsk City Council.

Results and lessons learned

• While 4 months are too short of a time to consider stats to be

robust…

• Only 5 appeals have been submitted so far on a wide variety

of issues – ranging from requests to improve public

transportation practices to issuance of IDs for people with

disabilities or requests to renovate a street

• Appeals as to corruption complaints feed into the national

stats, so there is no special statistics on this

Results and lessons learned

• Better targeting and narrower focus

• More involvement of the potential users into the design

process

• Ensuring more ownership of the community rather than only

the city council

Thank you !