Gravesham launches reporting phone app

Gravesham BC has made the Gravesham 24 application available on the Android platform, for BlackBerrys and for any iPhone running on on iPhone 4 software. It can be downloaded for free from the relevant app stores. People can use their phone's camera to photograph the item in question, select the relevant category and send it to the council with notes. The information is automatically fed into the council's system and passed on to the appropriate team to deal with the problem. The phone's GPS pinpoints the user's location so the council knows where to send its staff. The user can check progress on resolving the issue and see other reports throughout the borough. It can also provide information through a link to the council's RSS feed. A spokesperson for the council told GC News that Darren Everdern in its IT department spotted news that the CitySourced mobile civic engagement platform had won an award in the US – where it is used by 20 cities including New York, Boston and Los Angeles – prompting it to contact the company. It worked on the development of the application for Gravesham with Northgate Public Services and various council departments, and the two companies have now made it available for all of the UK. The application will integrate with different council systems, so that anybody downloading the Gravesham version would be able to report a problem within the boundaries of another authority that was using its own version. "We hope our neighbours will adopt it," he said. "It doesn't matter whichever application it will have." He added that the council is looking at other services for which the application could be used. "We're pondering what would be useful for people as the next step," he said. "It could be developed organically as people point out what would be good to have." Council leader Mike Snelling said: "This is a superb, easy to use tool which is designed to help provide a swift response to a range of incidents from fly tipping to missed refuse collections. It will empower residents to report things as they see them and get action."