Mobile app Liepaja City - Liepaja
Liepaja (Latvia)
The mobile app called "The City of Liepāja" was created to expand the opportunities for citizens to more conveniently convey information about improvements in the urban environment, as well as to promote communication with the municipality of Liepāja.
The following functions are available in the application: inform about the necessary improvements in the urban environment, plan a trip in the city's public transport, familiarize yourself with upcoming events, and receive the most important notifications from the municipality.
It is a perspective tool for mutual communication between the municipality and the city's residents, created by taking into account the trends in the use of modern technologies and encouraging residents to participate, which is important for a sustainable city. It is also an excellent example for other Latvian cities, how to address their residents and also city guests.
The main goal of the project is to respond quickly to citizens' applications to clean up the environment!
The processes that are under this service's residents are only electronic, from applying through the app, transferring to the document management system, as well as concluding the task and giving back the link - all this contributes to the circulation of paperless documents - both by creating submissions to use the latest technologies, and also mutual in communication between municipal authorities.
Also, this is and proactive service without any bureaucracy between the municipality and citizens. (principle 3.3.1.) Services are made more accessible and findable. (principle 3.2.1)
Service is fully handled online and the status of service delivery to the municipality can be checked online. (principle 3.4.1)
Upon receiving a response, the administrator provides a comment on the response in the application's administration panel and changes the status of the application to "completed". If any of the executions is delayed, an explanation is requested from the responsible institution, which the application administrator also places on the card next to the application to inform the applicant about the progress of the execution. Half of the applications are currently in the "field" of responsibility of the Municipal Administration.
Liepaja city app should receive the award because it has changed the way, how citizens can communicate with the municipality, and they really do that and use this opportunity. Also, this service has improved the organization of municipal processes, digitization, and cooperation between municipal operations.
With the introduction of this app, a new process was introduced where the Service and Customer Service Center transfers work tasks to the authorities covered by the application submitted in the app. kalendārs.liepaja.lv, which before could only be used in the web version, has also gained a place in the app and is easy to use. Calendars are managed by the Public Relations and Marketing part of the process, where event organisers can claim rights and publish information to promote their event.
Notification - also a new process that is triggered in emergency situations, and as a result of which a decision is made to send a push notification to the users of the "City of Liepāja" app. Requesting, developing, testing and approving changes is also a separate process, which is mainly carried out by the IT department in cooperation with the Mobile App development group. All submitted applications are stored in the application's administration panel, as well as registered in DVS, from which we can retrieve and use data in decision-making.
The application has been downloaded by 2,594 residents within 2 years. Of the 1,034 reports sent in 2022, 1,010 (97.7%) have been resolved and 24 (2.3%) are being processed.
Most actively (more than 50% of the total number of reports) residents reported on issues under the supervision of the Communal Administration.
