The BBC ran an interesting story over the weekend called The mobile phone app that keeps your streets clean. Apparently, a London council has developed an app which makes it simple for people to report graffiti and rubbish in their area.
As well as highlighting the benefits of smart-phones, it also brings into focus an important dilemma for government – to app or not to app.
Having viewed the report, you might think this question is a no-brainer, but you’d be wrong. Apps may well be flavour of the month right now, but those developing and deploying them face a significant technical problem – how to implement them.
Today’s world of mobile devices is not dissimilar to that of the personal computer in the early 1980s, with a number of platforms vying for market share and the much sought-after label of “de facto standard”. Not only do the main players – Google, Apple, RIM and Microsoft – have differing development environments, but not all the devices they support have the same capabilities. This means that developers are forced to create different versions of the same application for each environment (and in some cases, devices as well).
A stark choice
The stark choice developers face is whether to create and develop apps for each platform, or use a web-based approach to create a one-size-fits-all solution. The latter option has problems. Firstly, users have to be online to use the app. Secondly, a lack of interface standards make it virtually impossible to access built-in hardware features, such as the camera and GPS – thereby negating most of the benefits offered by the devices.
While there’s hope this problem will be solved by HTML5, developers will be forced to build business cases around specific mobile platforms. The result? Only those with mainstream devices will enjoy the full benefits. How well that fits into the public sector – where any lack of ubiquity can cause political headaches – is anyone’s guess. My hope is that civil servants will ignore the criticism that may result, and focus on accruing the benefits offered by apps where they can. After all, even if only 20% of citizens can speedily report problems in their area (smart-phone penetration is around 32% in the UK), that’s a 20% improvement on today.