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  • Aljunied GRC’s iPhone App: Small Step Towards Gov 2.0 ?

    Dec
    29
    posted by jitsion on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 2:10pm Categories: Blog

    sg-iphoneSingapore is known for its stability and efficiency in all areas of the government and governance controls over its citizens. Singapore has spent a relatively short time to achieve its reputation and has started to evolve in its progressive strategies. More and more, government in developed nations have started to engage their people in social media platforms, leveraging web/mobile tools to listen and interact on a personal level.

    I have been staying in Hougang (north-east town with mainly retirees) and have been famously “sliced” into the Aljunied Group Representation Constituency (GRC) from Hougang GRC over the years. Aljunied GRC is headed by George Yeo, who guest blogs at BeyongSG & has his own Facebook profile with frequent updates (status and photos) based on his travels as Singapore’s Foreign Minister. George Yeo is probably the minister that has the most number of active social platforms. Most recently, iMerlion which covers Singapore iphone development news, wrote about iLink@Aljunied, the very first iphone application coming out from a Singapore GRC. The no-frills app developed by (ZenDragon Studios) provides information on happenings around the neighborhood, tool for reporting estate defects and schedules of  MP’s (Member of Parliament/Politician). It’s definitely a good attempt to engage the young political conscious adults and also encourage them to be more proactive within their communities.

    Hopefully, this is just a tiny part of the Singapore government’s 2.0 roadmap. Gov 2.0 Summit (co-produced by O-Reilly Media and TechWeb) held in Washington D.C.  made headlines when they  brought all the thought leaders from various fields and institutions and  discussed through Gov 2.0 trends and topics. Tim O’Reilly wrote a guest post on Techcrunch on the topic of Gov 2.0 Summit and his insights. Most striking about his points was that Gov 2.0 should aim to be a platform for citizens to build on, a kinda civic action organizing engine for the people rather than the current “vending machine” model where we pay taxes and we get certain services. Coincidentally, the Obama administration has just issued a Open Government Directive that sets a schedule on making certain “high-value” data sets online in about 100days.

    America has been the front runner in this so far, but how about the Singapore government? One must say that the Govt. has been successful in implementing IT solutions that serve day to day needs of its citizens like the govt. micro-sites, TradeXchange, SingPass portal. However, the big question is, if they can take this to the next level, to connect and tightly integrate the information to bring more value to the citizens and open more channels of engagement. While it is evident that they are supporting such initiatives through various partners, I think it’s time for not just the govt. but also for the citizens to step up their responsibility in steering new initiatives here and take up active participatory role in any new platforms. The iphone app is a good step forward by Aljunied GRC’s team and I hope there will be more interesting platforms for us to engage our ministers and government bodies more often.

    Notes:

    Take a look at the demo of some Applications that came out from the “Apps for America II” competition conducted by Sunlight Labs using data from Data.gov. Especially love the app that present visualization of America’s unemployment rates throughout the 50 states. (5:00 in video)

    If you are interested to know more about Singapore’s “Gov 2.0″-like roadmap, its here.

    You can read Websg.org’s perspective of the Gov 2.0 Summit event written by Lucian.

    Obama’s Open Government Directive on Scribd

    iLink@Aljunied App: (I would recommend those with iphones to try it out, if not take a look at the screenshots below) The app shows you updates around your community, news on events happening and happened. It gives timing and location information on sessions where the minister/members of parliament meet(s) the people on a 1-1 session. The other main tab allows residents to feedback on estate defects that they chanced upon around their neighborhood by describing it with the help of a photo. Here’s the collection of the estate defects on the Aljunied GRC’s web.


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