Will citizens use an application for the reporting of traffic incidents?
Local authority: Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA)
Country: Uganda
Kampala Capital City Authority wants to tackle traffic congestion, which has a major impact across the whole city in terms of pollution and wasted time for drivers. The causes of congestion are numerous in Kampala but a lack of reliable information for citizens on traffic activity is seen as a major factor that can be mitigated.
The Local Action Plan is focused on Kampala Konnect, which is a unifying vision for improved traffic mobility led by the local authority. One aspect of this roadmap is the development of an incident reporting tool for traffic accidents and other causes of congestion, such as flooding or potholes.
The focus of experimentation for KCCA was to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) for the incident reporting tool that would be shared directly with citizens as part of a launch campaign, to gauge how people would use the application and whether the two-way process of reporting traffic incidents could be sustainable.
ASSUMPTION: We believe the interface will be easy to use and that travellers will report the type of incidents.
How the Local Action Group tested it
• Engaged a consultant who KCCA had an existing commercial relationship with. This allowed them to bypass some procurement rules and build the first version of the solution quickly, as a web portal and mobile application.
• Undertook user testing of the solution with staff members and other citizens.
• Adapted the original plan to hold off on “launching” the application following early testing that uncovered demand for key features that were deemed impor- tant to add before distribution.
What they learned
Showing citizens early versions of the solution allowed the user interface to be re-designed early. In the first version of the app, there were 3-4 forms for a citizen to fill before submitting an incident. Users requested this to be made easier, which led to an overhaul and redesign of the mobile application. Later iterations of the mobile application enabled citizens to report incidents using only one form. Features were identified that were crucial to user experience. With the early versions of the application, citizens would report incidents by manually entering their location. However, the implementing team saw a fundamental need for real-time location data as a built-in feature to enable seamless and accurate reporting.
Building the application brought up questions related to the city resourcing. There was a risk identified in the responsiveness of the city authority to incidents reported by the platform, given the low numbers of city engineers who could respond to them. Specifically, there are only two engineers per division and, given their existing workload, there would likely be a delay in resolving incidents reported at a large scale.
Rush hour in Kampala
Was the assumption validated?
Unclear The team learned:
• Lots of useful information was gleaned about the user interface of the application, but the team has yet to test whether people would report real incidents while travelling, as was envisaged.
• Future testing might focus on how the local authority can respond to incidents in a timely manner.
What next?
KCCA now plans to share the MVP solution with citizens in a launch towards the end of 2022.
The local authority also wishes to conduct an appraisal into what is needed to fully resource the solution financially. This follows developments such as the inclusion of the Google Maps API onto the platform, where KCCA will be charged according to the number of users. Secondly, KCCA has identified a strong need to engage the human resource department to train and equip more staff with skills on how to manage incidents reported by citizens.
Local group working on the application
