Software development and business consulting company Acumen Software has launched the first phase of its My Smart City citizen’s collaborative platform to allow citizens to engage key stakeholders in their communities to dialogue, share ideas and raise concerns to improve service delivery.

The application connects citizens to service providers across a city, including municipal services, emergency services, private services and events.

The first phase of the Android-, iOS- and Web-based platform has opened access to residents of the cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town, allowing them to report road-related issues, such as potholes and nonworking traffic lights, monitor and report any power or water outages, communicate with local municipal officials or raise a petition, besides others.

My Smart City logs requests, issues and faults on the resident’s behalf, which can then be escalated, monitored, tracked and traced as the service provider resolves the issues.

In the future, residents will be able to source private services, manage crowd-funding initiatives and gain access to community social and sporting events.

The app will be expanded into other major cities in South Africa and in various neighbouring countries over the next six months.

“My Smart City is giving South Africans a voice to see the resolution of service delivery issues and to allow them to view issues and log incidents, prioritise them and connect the right service providers to resolve them. We believe that the platform has the potential to uberise service delivery by putting the power in the hands of citizens who use the platform,” says Acumen Software CEO Joao Zoio.

As a one-stop shop for residents, the platform aims to revolutionise the way in which citizens, businesses, community groups and public-sector service providers communicate and collaborate in their wards.

Acumen is targeting the sign-up of four-million registered users, bringing citizens and public-service providers together through technology at no cost to citizens or their cities.

The company has secured private-equity investment from Capitec-backed Imvelo Ventures and Sappi-funded Andzani Ventures, which has been used to fund the development and launch of the platform.

Acumen’s My Smart City platform has already been integrated into the City of Cape Town’s call management system and intends connecting to all municipal systems to enable the automation of information flows from citizens.

“Where the My Smart City platform has not been granted access to interface with municipal systems, Acumen’s dispatch centre team will become the conduit between citizens and their municipalities to ensure that citizens’ issues are appropriately logged and tracked.”

Acumen Software’s My Smart City is powered by its mobile field service enterprise resource planning management software-as-a-service solution, Forcelink, which has over 100 customers and over 120 000 registered users.