Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Have App Will Travel

Coming soon:  Amherst town website version 5.0

Have you ever wanted to report a pothole soon after hitting it, or a traffic control signal not working properly after it delayed you at an intersection, or a tree limb hanging precariously over a wire? Well now you can do it from the convenience of your smart phone (after pulling over of course) because: there's an app for that!

In addition to unrolling a new and improved main town website early next month our award winning IT department will also unveil "Amherst Connect," a part of the wider state program called Commonwealth Connect, which allows citizens to instantly report and track non emergency problems.

Amherst first unveiled the main town website back in 2001 with a whopping 3 pages.  Today it has over 10,000 with almost 30% of users now accessing it via a mobile device.  Hence the new minimalist reversion of the main page.

Last year Amherst won second place in the Massachusetts Excellence in Technology category, but over the past year upped their game enough so that two weeks ago they were awarded first place.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Off topic but worth mentioning -- I would define this as "terrorism."

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/sony-hackers-threaten-911-attack-on-movie-theaters-that-screen-the-interview-1201380712/

Anonymous said...

Can't we just get it over with and appoint the Amherst IT team as the next regional school committee? They obviously know how to get things done, there's transparency, progress, and accolades are piling up.

Anonymous said...

Awesome! Spend money on this instead of public safety. Great town management.

Dr. Ed said...

Awesome! Spend money on this instead of public safety

Be more worried about this driving public safety. Be more worried about anonymous web complaints being used to harass unpopular people (can you say "racial minorities") and all the rest.

It is the 21st Century version of the Klan Lynching...

Anonymous said...

Ever try to find a quick answer to a question on that web site? Not gonna happen.

Anonymous said...

Do you see Klan lynchings everywhere? Along with Nazis? I'd like to report this unpopular person. Can you say paranoid?

Anonymous said...

This is great. The town of Amherst should also get on instagram so I can # @ pictures of pot holes and drunk students. :) #amherst #umass #pothole

For the love of God, shut up said...

Maybe the town will start a blog so the Dr. Ed will leave for greener pastures.

Anonymous said...

Anon complaints? This could get interesting!