Facilitating Citizens’ Voice and Process Reengineering Using a Cloud-based Mobile App

Recently, the City of Boston, in conjunction with a corporate partner, implemented a mobile, cloud-based app. Originally called “Citizens Connect,” but now called “Bos:311,” that app allows a citizen to report issues related the city's infrastructure, e.g., graffiti and other concerns. Rich information in the form of pictures and descriptions are provided by users from their mobile devices, along with GPS location information, crowdsourcing monitoring of the City's infrastructure. The app provides citizens with another channel for government to engage them and solicit their voice to potentially keep them from “exiting” (or working to push out those in government) and allows cities to generate “loyalty” consistent with Hirschman's classic economic analysis. In addition, this app ultimately can provide “straight through” processing of citizen requests in order to facilitate substantial reengineering of the process of monitoring and fixing city infrastructure, consistent with Hammer's notions of reengineering. As a result, operations and management accounting information can be more accurate and used in real time. In addition, the cloud-based capture of information from multiple cities allows comparisons and benchmarking of critical information that likely would not be possible in other settings, while allowing economic system use by large numbers of users. This system provides an integration of mobile apps and the cloud to generate improved information and transparency. This paper investigates a number of hypotheses about the use of the mobile app generated from both Hirschman's and Hammer's theories