Mar
3rd
Wed
3rd
Who’s Using Government 2.0 Apps?
A recent New York Times story cited a report which revealed that the average iPhone or iPod Touch user only utilizes 5-10 apps on a regular basis. This, despite over 140,000 being available. There is a tremendous app glut. In the Government 2.0 world, it’s popular to develop apps that do something with government data. There have been contests called Apps for Democracy and Apps for America. They get a lot of hype before and during, but what about after? The apps developed for America are rarely heard from again, seemingly disappearing into the gigantic app glut, swallowed whole. There are interesting apps, to be sure. But how many people who aren’t tech elites use any of these apps? (What is the percentage of people who are residents of Washington, DC who even have an iPhone?) If there’s a study out there on this, I’d like to see it. Rarely has an app from a Government 2.0 apps content gone on to fame and fortune. Rarely has someone turned, say, a maps and crime app into something put in hotel kiosks for tourists, or adapted it so that it could be used via the simple texting that average people have. Contests that are proof-of-principle are great, and necessary. But when will the meat and potatoes come? Many people in America saw how powerful the simple “text to donate $10 to the Red Cross for Haiti” initiative was (now it’s being used for Chile, too); that was started by one person at the State Department. No content, no hype - just effectiveness. If an app was created in a Government 2.0 event but no one uses it, was it ever really developed?
