Mobile engagement for local authorities

August 6th, 2009

I picked this up from the Linkedin Group on mobile content:

How can local government make savings and improve services? The answer, is mobile communications.

If “Quantitative Easing” is out of the question, how can local councils cope with a burden of spending against limited ability to raise council taxes? This is the question going through the head of every local authority chief where they are trying to improve standards of services and cut spending.

Wireless Expertise estimate that the UK government can save up to £9 billion a year by making better use of mobile technology and flexible working practices. Welcome to the glittering allure of the mobile society (smlxl whitepaper).

The Mobile Data Association carried out a survey of 392 local authorities in England and Scotland and received responses from over 1,200 employees. 85 per cent of the respondents acknowledge that there is already a project in a pilot stage where their local authority is considering mobile and flexible working.

That is quite impressive. The paper highlights some initiatives, like the one in the London borough of Newnham,

The London Borough of Newham, in partnership with Transport for London, has unveiled a new service for its residents, visitors and businesses. They can now access all the council services they need, from being able to find jobs, to reporting graffiti, on their mobiles, through one simple mobile website.

And Mynewham also enables communities to build their own networks with schools, voluntary organisations and sports clubs all able to communicate with their own members.The report touches on crime, education and health. Sadly it is not in-depth, and I would have liked more information. But perhaps as a signpost to the near future it has relevancy. I wonder however, if the knowledge from borough to borough and council to council and local authority to local authority is being shared? I don’t know, but have a hunch.

Howard Rheingold at SmartMobs posts about a hospital, the Mayo, near him I guess, that has also embraced mobile, Howard quotes Stephen Johnson who writes,

As I see it, mobile health will emerge as the result of a pincer movement, with customers getting increasingly engaged and familiar with living their life online with contextually smart mobile applications becoming ever more important, combined with irresistible pressure from healthcare providers and goverments to find efficiencies in the system that do not kill people. This is probably best done by shifting some people away from the expense and long waits of the doctor’s office and towards more “lightweight” solutions – nurses rather than doctors and automatic, algorithmic based assessments that cheaply extend medical cover to more people and shift our system to a proactive, preventative approach.

And for a deep dive in mobile healthcare click here. Amazingly, I heard Tomi Ahonen my co-author outline such possibilities in 2003. In my view, he is ‘the global knowledge bank’ of mobile services and how to make money from them.

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