Gone are the simple days where if you built it, they would come. In a recent ICMA web conference on mobile applications, participants learned that you have to know your citizens, build an app that makes their lives easier, and launch it with a creative marketing strategy. And then they will come--in droves.

On September 19, Christopher Thomas of Esri (an ICMA Strategic Partner) welcomed John Gillison, city manager of Rancho Cucamonga, California, for “City Hall in Your Pocket: Mobile Tools for Modern Citizens.” Gillison showed off RC2GO, a robust app that puts city hall right on your iPhone or iPad. To watch Gillison demonstrate the app, click here and select preview in the upper right hand corner: 

The revolutionary feature of this app is not that it allows you to access city services on your mobile phone, but that it integrates these services with other searchable items that you already use in your everyday life, such as retail and dining locators with GIS mapping. So with a single app, you can locate places to shop, eat lunch, and even report a broken sidewalk in front of an establishment.

Gillison explained that the marketing of the app was critical to engaging the community. Rancho Cucamonga reached out through a comprehensive marketing /communications plan that included traditional marketing tactics along with an aggressive social media component. The Facebook marketing alone reached 200,000 users within a 10-mile radius of the city.

Rancho Cucamonga garnered more than 2,300 downloads of this app within the first seven months and plans are underway to build an android version.

To learn more about “City Hall in Your Pocket: Mobile Tools for Modern Citizens,” a CD-ROM or online streaming of the event is available here.