LowcountryBizSC: John Tecklenburg for Mayor unveils new technology
Mobile app just the start of a plan to improve city services
CHARLESTON, SC – Charleston mayoral candidate John Tecklenburg has released a campaign mobile application, making him the first candidate in the state to have an app that allows people to follow and interact with the campaign from their smartphones. In addition to sending e-mail and photos to the campaign and following the campaign’s social media from the app, users can also be directly linked to live Charleston traffic and current weather stats.
“We think the mobile app adds a bit of innovation to the campaign and allows more people to connect and stay in touch with us throughout the year,” said Tecklenburg. “We also see it as a prototype as we would aim to apply similar technology to better organize city government services for our citizens,” he notes.
The campaign app is free and available for iPhones and Androids. It can be downloaded from the iTunes store by clicking here and from the Android store by clicking here. The app can also be found in each phone’s app store by searching for “Tecklenburg”.
Tecklenburg also seeks to implement a centralized citizen service number to solely focus on handling citizens’ requests and complaints. “This will allow the city to be more responsive and accountable to our citizens and improve city services,” said Tecklenburg. “We aim to make city government more accessible and responsive to all of its citizens,” he added.
He cites the model set by Baltimore, Md., one of the first to adopt CitiStat in 2000, which has helped three administrations streamline bureaucracy, improve city services, reduce employee absenteeism, cut costs and provide executive direction to major operational agencies. CitiStat has been at the root of Baltimore’s management strategy: performance goals are set, managers and workers are held accountable, and results are measured — not yearly, quarterly or monthly, but week-to-week, according to a June 30, 2010 article in the Baltimore Sun.
Along with a centralized citizen service number, Tecklenburg proposes a mobile application to allow citizens to report problems in their neighborhood, give citizens a calendar of events, and other features, directly from their mobile device. The city could then monitor the different kinds of requests and complaints and track their performance and response time. The statistics or metrics obtained would then allow decisions to better allocate resources and improve services, according to Tecklenburg. He commended the City of Charleston Police Department for their recent app that allows citizens to report crimes and receive alerts from the Charleston Police Department. That app is available by clicking here.
“From my experience as a businessman for most of my working life, devoted to customer service, I recognize the importance of incorporating creativity to find new solutions. In today’s society, the majority of people have smartphones and the technology will only get better. Together, let’s find new ways, especially with the emergence of so many new digital and creative companies in
Charleston, to help make our government as accessible, transparent and innovative as possible,” Tecklenburg noted.
Tecklenburg seeks to find the best solutions to improve the well-being of our city and its citizens, according to campaign insiders. He is a firm believer in using common sense as a guide to solving problems, making decisions and taking action, constantly working to leave things better than they were found.
Tecklenburg seeks “…to lead the City of Charleston out of his desire to serve our wonderful community, its people and to provide a more livable Charleston as we manage growth and global popularity. It’s great to be the number one travel destination, but let’s be first and foremost for our citizens,” Tecklenburg firmly believes.
More information is available at http://tecklenburgformayor.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tecklenburgformayor .
