Five mobile web opportunities for municipalities?

16 mrt 2010

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Various studies were recently published about the accessibility of municipal websites in the Netherlands. The Bartiméus Accessibility Foundation and the Government Web Monitor periodically assess the website accessibility of our local authorities. However, neither studies breathed a word about the municipal accessibility via mobile internet. That's why Jungle Minds researched the mobile accessibility of the 30 largest municipalities in the Netherlands. This article sheds light on the results and provides an overview of five mobile opportunities for municipalities.

What is mobile accessibility?

In this research, Jungle Minds investigated the extent to which the 30 largest municipalities in the Netherlands were active on the mobile web. In doing so, we focused on both mobile websites and mobile applications. We define mobile websites as a variation of regular municipal websites that have been adapted for use by a mobile browser. We define mobile applications as applications that exist on users' mobile phones and which offer municipal data and applications. Two weeks ago, my colleague Kamil van Buuren already wrote an interesting article about mobile websites and mobile apps.

Conclusion: four out of the 30 largest municipalities have mobile accessibility

It turns out that municipalities still have limited mobile accessibility. Of the 30 largest municipalities in the Netherlands, only Amsterdam, The Hague, Eindhoven and Apeldoorn have websites with mobile accessibility.

www.amsterdam.nl/pda The capital city's mobile website offers a user-friendly overview of the most relevant information, addresses and current news.
www.eindhoven.nl/mobiel Eindhoven also has a mobile website that displays pertinent information found on its regular website. Their homepage is less detailed compared to Amsterdam's homepage.
http://mobiel.denhaag.nl The Hague probably has the most useful mobile website. Its homepage displays an ordered overview of the most important subjects, distinguishes between target groups and provides up-to-date news.
http://mobiel.apeldoorn.nl The webmasters from the municipality of Apeldoorn developed a mobile website for Queen's Day 2009, a day which ultimately ended in tragedy. It contains all the necessary information about the Queen's Day event.

No mobile access

No mobile access
Rotterdam	Haarlemmermeer	Den Haag	’s-Hertogenbosch
Utrecht	Maastricht	Eindhoven	Dordrecht
Tilburg	Leiden	Groningen	Zoetermeer
Almere	Zwolle	Breda	Emmen
Nijmegen	Ede	Apeldoorn	Westland
Enschede	Sittard-Geleen	Haarlem	Deventer
Arnhem	Delft	Zaanstad	Alkmaar
Amersfoort

Mobile internet has great growing potential…

Jungle Minds has concluded that the larger Dutch municipalities make little use of mobile web opportunities. It makes sense to ask whether municipalities should even bother to use mobile internet and what the most important reasons are for doing so. Here are a number of reasons:

Use of mobile internet is rapidly growing (also in the Netherlands)

Forrester Research, a technology and marketing research firm, estimated that the percentage of the Dutch population that uses mobile internet will increase by 15% in 2009 and as much as 47% by 2014. Moreover, smart phones with internet access (e.g. the iPhone) are clearly on the rise as well. These types of phones had already reached a market share of 25% in 2009 according to GfK, an information services firm (as opposed to 8% in 2008).

A mobile phone with internet access has unique features

A mobile phone with internet access has a number of advantages compared to PCs, for example. Following are the most important advantages:

'Always close at hand': in contrast to the PC, everyone always has their mobile phone close at hand. Whether travelling by plane, train or automobile.
Location-bound: many new smart phones have GPS technology, so you can offer location-specific services.
Camera: almost every self-respecting mobile phone has a camera nowadays, which owners can use to capture and share the world around them.

Five mobile web opportunities for municipalities

Based on the possibilities offered by mobile internet, Jungle Minds has identified five opportunities for municipalities:

1. Mobile information supply

With this we mean making the most important information on a 'regular website' available on mobile phones, such as:

Addresses of municipal departments and services
News reports
Event information
Local and city council information
Tourist information

The above is useful for citizens on their way to a municipal department, for tourists and for anyone with a mobile phone searching for the latest news from city or municipality authorities.

2. Problem solver

A mobile phone with GPS capacity and a camera enables citizens, based on their location, to spot and solve neighbourhood problems, such as vandalism, faltering street lighting, overflowing dustbins, etc.

A clever iPhone app was developed for this kind of purpose in New York. New Yorkers confronted with problems on their street take a picture with their mobile phone and send it by means of this extremely intuitive application to a municipal central database.

Problem-solving app: BigAppleReporter

3. Self-service

People visit municipal websites to register for things, to submit requests and to inform the municipality about changes of information. Think, for example, of information to do with births, driver's licences, changes of address or any other kind of information the municipality requires you to pass on. The mobile websites in Amsterdam, The Hague and Eindhoven are informative by nature, though the functional applications are still lacking.

How useful would it be if you were able to submit your official request for a driver's licence right after passing your test? So that all you had to do was go to city hall to pick up your driver's licence? Better yet, imagine you're standing in city hall, waiting in a huge cue. Why not fill in your form on your mobile phone while you're waiting? Once it's your turn, all you have to do is go over the form with a civil servant.

4. Tourism

It's not only residents of cities that stand to benefit from mobile websites. Tourists can take advantage too. Think of historical city tours or public transport information. A search in any app store will reveal tourist apps developed by commercial companies, especially for larger cities. Smaller cities in the Netherlands, however, have not been able to reap the rewards of these commercial initiatives yet.

5. Educational

An increasing number of children have mobile phones with internet access and GPS capability. As a municipality, why wouldn't you take advantage of this by developing more educational mobile applications? Think, for example, of historical GPS city tours with a playful element or mobile applications geared at city museums or parks. It appears that the municipality of The Hague is busy developing a mobile application to promote the city's rich archaeological urban history. This could be a fun extracurricular activity for this city's students of history and social studies.

In short, municipal mobile access can – and should – improve. As a municipality, it's certainly advisable to take the mobile medium seriously. Start by researching how many citizens and tourists currently use mobile internet technology. Consult web statistics to see how often your regular website is accessed by mobile internet. Above all, determine a relevant way in which mobile internet can contribute to various municipal functions and objectives... Because before you know it, there will be more municipalities offering relevant mobile applications.

Sources:

The Bartiméus Accessibility Foundation: http://www.accessibility.nl/algemeen/nieuws?id=225
Government Web Monitor: http://monitor.overheid.nl/nieuws/ranglijsten_maart_online
Statistics regarding mobile: http://www.openmobielinternet.com/2009/09/03/forrester-mobiel-internet-voorbij-kritische-punt/

Research method

Four research methods were used to investigate the mobile accessibility of municipalities. In doing so, we ascertained whether both a mobile website and a mobile application existed. We took the following steps:

We opened all municipal URLs with a mobile browser (Safari) to see whether they were optimized for mobile browsers.
We assessed whether regular websites mentioned the existence of a mobile website or a mobile application.
We Googled [Name Municipality] + mobile website.
We looked in the app store for the availability of municipal iPhone applications.