Innovative tool to manage citizen-government communication in developing countries
Change in the way communication between citizens and government to achieve better results is performed and handled
About You
About You
First Name
Elton
Last Name
Osorio
Twitter URL
http://twitter.com/#!/Elton_Osorio
Facebook URL
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Apporta
Organization Website
-
Organization Country
Mexico, JAL
Country where this project is creating social impact
Mexico, JAL
Is your organization a
Not registered
How long has your organization been operating?
Less than a year
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Innovation
Entry Form title
Innovative tool to manage citizen-government communication in developing countries
Select the stage that best applies to your solution
Idea (you're poised to launch)
How long have you been in operation?
Still in idea phase, but looking to launch soon
THE NEED: Describe the need for your solution and the size/dynamic of the community (ies) you will engage
Today the society in Mexico and Latin America is facing the following problem:
Citizens do not report problems of infrastructure in their cities because they perceive that they are not given follow-up and response to the time invested.
-People do not know where to report.
-Many addresses, phone numbers and different locations to report.
-Management of complaints is inefficient.
-Complaint-process time consuming and bureaucratic.
-Large number of incidents and problems on the streets
-You can not show negligence of the government.
-Difficult/Nil Tracking of complaints.
-Lack of transparency.
Current solutions are:
- Citizens fix their problems by themselves.
- No reporting of incidents.
- The government fixes things until an accident happens.
Citizens aged 18 to 44 years of age who use the Internet in major metropolitan areas of the country. This equates to 50% of internet users in Mexico (35 million Internet INEGI 2010)
90% of internet users use social networks to communicate. (AMIPCI)
Types of problems:
Water and Sewer
Public Lighting
Traffic
Parks
Urban maintenance
THE SOLUTION: Please explain what your solution offers and how it is innovative. How will you put your solution into the hands of users or beneficiaries? Be specific!
It intends to develop a platform in the cloud (web 2.0 and mobiles) to enable the public to report problems of society and to link the complaints directly to who is directly and indirectly responsible for it. This through a single tool regardless of the type of complaint and different audiences, creating an effective and timely communication channel.
The platform identifies the type of complaint and who is responsible for handling the complaint. This is done through an engine that identifies those who are responsible from an information requested by the citizen.
Complaints can be geo-located, with photos, videos and description of it.
Once the complaint is discharged it generates an electronic file that contains the evidence of the claim in legal terms to force the government to respond and generates a timeline where you specify the process, time and responsibility to solve the problem reported.
All these reports will be posted on the website where you can be reviewing the number, type, location, time, and monitoring of complaints by agency, municipality and region. This helps to recognize those agencies successfully catering to the majority of complaints received and generates competition among agencies and governments.
This saves time, resources, empowers the citizen, easy tracking, improved project assertiveness and decision making, improved management of citizen-government communication and overall a better city, innovative, cutting edge, clean and orderly.
THE MODEL: Walk us through a specific example of how your solution makes a difference through use of information technology and media
How it works
1) A citizen is traveling on the street and detect any situation he/she wishes to report.
2) Entes the application on his/her mobile device and enters the portal via any Internet access.
3) Enter the information and evidence (photo, video) that you are prompted.
4) When selecting the type of complaint, the system identifies the direct and indirect responsible of the complaint.
5) the complaint is sent to those responsible.
6) It generates a time-line where you graphically shows the process and responsible for solving your problem.
7) If desired, the complaint is shared in social networks with a slogan created by the citizens to invite your network of acquaintances to monitor your report and make more citizen complaints.
8) It serves the complaint and amended complaint status of the system. (Sent to attend)
9) the problem is solved through citizen involvement.
Used technologies and tools that society uses every day to simplify the communication process with the government and engage citizens in solving the problems that concern society.
It simplifies the process by using a single tool that unifies communication with the government. Currently it can be done by telephone, letter / mail, e-mail, social networking and personal contact. The current method is slow, bureaucratic, generates information in different formats is not easy to store, generate reports and knowledge from it.
THE MARKETPLACE: Who are your peers and competitors? What challenges could these players pose to your success or growth?
The main competitor is a company called CitiVox, which sells a system (Goverment Relationship Management) under annual licenses to municipalities. Monitors and manages the complaints of the citizens of a specific municipality.
The main difference is that our platform is used to make complaints to any municipality without the need for the municipality to acquire the first system licenses.
Our proposal = (citizen complaints freely, government receives and fixes)
CitiVox = (municipal government contracts for specific services, a citizen of a specific municipality complaint, the municipality government resolves)
On the other hand, the target market is not Mexico CitiVox or Latin America because their primary communication tool (page from the Internet) is only in English. It also licenses they sell are of high cost and the system takes a long time to implement (66mil dlls, 3 months).
Collaborate with civil society organizations for Beta product development and its possible dissemination.
An interesting challenge is that CitiVox decides to free its system to any municipality or agency that requests it.
Social Impact
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
FOUNDING STORY: We want to hear about your “Aha!” moment. Share the story of where and when the founder(s) saw this solution’s potential to change the world.
Personally since I have accounts on social networks I am a surfer who participate and interact with civil society and municipal organizations, at state and federal levels. I've had very good experiences with ministries, government agencies and politicians when extending any complaint or report through social networks. Interestingly, if you make a complaint with traditional methods will never solve the problem, but if you make the complaint on social networks, they will cater the problem and provide solutions within hours. This is because the complaint's see thousands of people (citizens, media and other politicians) is here the moment of inspiration! where I came to an open platform to society in general, interact with social networks and linking the problems of society with those responsible.
On the other hand, is now perceived in society a climate of disgust and discomfort due to poor communication between citizens and government. So the goal is to provide society with a unified tool to express and send their reports, complaints and suggestions to the authorities.
Specify both the depth and scale of your solution’s social impact to date
This project may have a local, regional, national and international reach to millions of people because of how easy it is to reach the responsible for the area, it will make the complaint and automatically start sending photo-complaints to the government or agency.
On the other hand, in all the world's population in the cities there are problems which must be reported and / or reported by citizens to the authorities to take remedial actions.
It generates greater speed and ease of sending and handling complaints, empowers and involves citizens in community affairs, giving the ability to centralize citizen complaints in a single database to be able to cross and map variables reported in areas geographicly. This is to enable governments to make better and wiser decisions.
A city, country and planet better connected, more organized, at the forefront of matters directly affecting citizens.
If the people invest time in denouncing the government addresses and resolves the complaint. We can ensure that increases exponentially Citizen Participation.
What is your projected impact within the next 1-5 years? Is your idea replicable? If so, how?
Our goal is to make this platform a social movement that is the basis of communication between citizens and government. Taking as a first instance of the street common problems and go scaling up the model by applying the same basis for problems and / or more complex claims.
I firmly believe that it can be replicated in other regions and different markets and we want to express complaints, incidents and problems that affect us is a characteristic of all people. That if properly channeled, that desire can no longer be a random effort to become a massive effort that seeks a satisfactory answer.
Also it can be replicated in the private sector and not only in public (government).
Winning entries present a strong plan for how they will achieve and mark growth. Identify your six-month milestone for growing your impact
Develop the best possible product derived from the constant feedback from end users (citizens and government)
Six-Month Tasks
Task 1
Development platforms and applications for BETA mobile devices
Task 2
BETA presentation platform for users to receive feedback and make modifications based on the same
Task 3
Promoting Government BETA platform, users, opinion leaders, civil organizations, media and involved
Now think bigger! Identify your 12-month impact milestone
Position the platform as the basis for communication between citizens and government in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara
12-Month Tasks
Task 1
Release V1.0 of the final platform in the Metropolitan Zone of Guadalajara
Task 2
Expanding catalog of such complaints and responsible in the ZMG
Task 3
Promote the benefits and results of the platform based on the satisfaction of current users.
How many people have been impacted by your project?
Fewer than 100
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
More than 10,000
Sustainability
Explain how your company, program, service or product is structured
Business
What barriers have hindered the success of your project to date? How do you plan to overcome these and other challenges as you grow your solution?
That the perception of citizens in relation to the management and responsiveness of government on the basis of complaints received is very negative.
We believe that if we provide a clear and simple tool to use to solve the problem easily detected, we can make citizens perceive that their time invested is useful to solve social problems and generate the dynamics of citizen participation that we seek to generate.
How do you see the information-technology and media sectors shifting over the next decade? How will your solution adapt to and/or drive that changing environment?
Access to and use of the Internet on the planet will reach nearly 80% of the world population. We believe that if we base our solution on the use of technologies that are being used worldwide as a trend, we can adapt easily to different regions and changes in the world.
We seek to give different applications to existing media.
Failure is not always an option. If your solution fails to gain traction in the next two years, what other applications of the idea could you explore?
It could create a platform that links the citizens of a country with rights and obligations regarding specific issues.
For example, to provide our countrymen with a tool of direct communication with the Mexican government should they be in a position of need for information or being the victim of a violation of human rights.
Expand on your selections, explaining how you will sustain funding
* Charging the government on demand or number of complaints received by the application. (operating income or equilibrium points)
received | share | pay | serviced | Discount | total pay
1000 $5.00 $5,000.00 85 al 100% 40% $3,571.43
1000 $5.00 $5,000.00 50 al 70% 20% $3,846.15
1000 $5.00 $5,000.00 0 al 20% 0% $5,000.00
*Sale of the knowledge generated from the information managed. Generate and sell Analytics and useful reports for the government, media, politicians and citizens.
* Selling advertising space exclusively for social programs, supports entrepreneurs, NGOs, and social impact projects. This is not to bombard users with junk mail.
Tell us about your partnerships
We are creating partnerships with civil society organizations seeking to generate greater interaction in public decisions.
Also, with opinion leaders and early adapters, this to make changes in development based on feedback obtained from you.
On the other hand we seek to generate media alliance for the dissemination of the application.
Finally, partnerships with government to fully exploit the benefits generated by the platform.
What type of team (staff, volunteers, etc.) will ensure that you achieve the growth milestones identified in the Social Impact section?
We are 3 founders with entrepreneurial, information technology, business and government dynamics expertise.
Likewise, we need 2 systems engineers employees to develop the platform, a specialist in media and marketing specialist.
To scale the model, we need a company representative in the region in which we want to start making claims, for discharging the offices of the region.
Changemakers is a collaborative and supportive space. Please specify any community resources you would need to grow and sustain your initiative. Select all that apply
Investment, Marketing or media, Collaboration or networking.
Specify any resources you might offer to support other initiatives. Select all that apply
Human resources or talent, Innovation or ideas, Mentorship.
Please elaborate on any needs or offers you have mentioned above and/or suggest categories of support that aren’t specified within the list
We need a seed investment to complete the development of the BETA, expert advice on media, communication and marketing, ultimately we need access to networks of entrepreneurs, innovators, civil society organizations, mentors and change agents.
We offer help in idea generation, innovation with high potential social and economic development, identifying opportunities, developing technical proposals, and advice on issues of technological entrepreneurship.
Summary
Define your company, program, service or product in 1-2 short sentences
Social movement that allows citizens to file complaints of everyday problems by applying Web 2.0
Identify what is innovative about your solution in 1-2 short sentences
Change in the way communication between citizens and government to achieve better results is performed and handled
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