Citizens often raise different and multiple requests and inquiries
on a daily basis, which administrations most likely cannot directly address and
solve such concerns immediately. This is due to their limited scope of works,
responsibilities and so on. On this scenario, administrators would
automatically either transfer concerns to another administration or advice
citizens to reach another office to raise their requests or inquiries. With
this, it is natural for the citizens to be frustrated and raise even bigger
concerns.
Transferring of citizen concerns could lead to duplicate filing, inconsistency of follow ups, not updated records, or even be lost.
To improve administrations’ efficacy and productivity, a transversal approach must be implemented; practicing of centralized information gathering and sharing would save a lot of time and effort for both administrators and citizens, since data needed are complete and updated and communication can be established at the citizen’s own comfort and convenient time
Antopolis is an ERP built for cities, based on Odoo and is dedicated to city management. It is a web-based, customizable platform for different cities. Antopolis started as an R&D project run by BHC (a partner of Odoo), was created as a company on April 1, 2020 and is now already implemented in several Belgian cities.
Citizen Relationship Management – a core app of Antopolis. Concerns from different ways such as emails, text messages, phone calls, written letters or even comments on social media platforms are funneled and are distributed to concerning departments or administrations. On this core app, citizens can trace a request or inquiry and has access on when a concern has been raised, who were able to communicate with the citizen, current status (if the concern has been addressed or not, up-to-date). Citizens themselves can sign up to have their own portal. And on this portal, citizens has access to all services from the administration online, such as ordering documents, paying bills, registering children to community activities and so on.
Incident Signaling – this platform has 2 different mobile apps, one for regular citizens and another for the employees of the city. As the name suggests, this app is dedicated to signal its end-users of incidents and provides an avenue for concerned citizens to take pictures, upload and update incidents in the city. Citizens can also follow up for resolutions, real-time. And since city incidents are funneled on to this app, the city administrations can easily prioritize whichever incident and plan out the order of urgency.
Citizen Participation – on its citizen portal, citizens can submit ideas for city improvements and support or vote for other citizen’s suggestion.
Document Requests – on this app, citizens can request for certain documents, pay for fees online fill-up required forms. Another good side of this app is that if the administration needs additional information or if the citizen has inquiries, they can easily communicate instead of sending out or receiving incomplete or incorrect documents.
Deliberations – for citizens with requests or suggestions, it is possible to generate a deliberation with concerning administrators or departments. All deliberation points can be tracked efficiently. And once a deliberation is done, city announcements, reports or memos are also available online.
Youth – this app is extended specifically for extracurricular activities for the youth. Parents can register their children and pay necessary fees online. Parents can also update their children’s profiles such as health-related data. QRs are also used, to monitor and check time consumed on different activities or services. There is also a school bus management app, wherein parents can register their kids online and can track if all kids registered for a specific ride are present.
With Antopolis, administrative processes are more efficient, administrations adapt to modern and eco-friendly solutions, communication between administrators and citizens are more consistent and effective, citizens are given opportunities to take part of the city’s agendas and co-create solutions, and administration productivity will improve since data are centralized and are up-to-date.