Taking City Hall to the People (Literally)

Picture a food truck. But, instead of selling food and drink, the truck is providing easy and expedited access to municipal services via a completely mobile civic environment.

Municipalities are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to boost civic engagement and create more meaningful touchpoints with citizens. The City of Boston is tackling this challenge ‘head on’ through the use of WIFI-enabled trucks.

In addition to providing free Internet access to surrounding areas, the truck enables community members to file and pay property taxes, register to vote, acquire recycling bins, and sign up for a library card. This unusual citizen engagement approach has been successfully implemented in a number of U.S. cities (e.g., Dallas, Texas, and Durham, North Carolina). It resulted in increases of up to 250% in service-driven transactions.

Spurred on by the Bloomberg Philanthropies' Mayors Challenge, the rationale behind this project was to deliver government services to underserved communities.

It has also allowed participating jurisdictions to expand their citizen reach in a cost-effective manner.

The costs associated with this investment are expected to be less than what it would cost to expand a municipality’s real-estate footprint or invest in online digital technologies that may not be used by, or readily accessible to, all community members.

This type of community outreach is innovative, improves citizens’ accessibility to services, and creates opportunities for municipalities to meaningfully connect and serve their communities.

So, why not start your own ‘City Hall To Go’ so you can (literally) drive municipal services into your community? It’s a creative solution to many of the everyday challenges faced by Alberta municipalities, and it’s worthy of further consideration.

For more information, please contact dblackburn [at] auma.ca (subject: Innovation%20article%20in%20Digest) (Dan Blackburn, Senior Director of Growth & Innovation).