I’d like to highlight HeyGov!, a solution that uses MapDotNet, Bing Maps, and Azure to communicate and manage 311 issues for governments and citizens. Earlier this year, ISC won a Windows Azure contest for the best US Public Sector Application and used the winning application as the foundation for HeyGov!.

Released this past April, HeyGov! is “a Web 2.0 app “for government that is designed to help with citizen communication. It can be used by virtually any government department that deals with direct requests from the public. HeyGov! can integrate with an existing on-premise customer relationship management (CRM) system or provides a cloud-hosted CRM as an alternative.” The goal is to decrease local call center volume and improve customer service by adding a new level of transparency.

Miami and San Francisco are HeyGov!’s current users; also, because of San Francisco’s adoption of Open 311 standard, citizens of San Francisco can add service requests directly from HeyGov!. According to Benton Belcher, Business Developer for HeyGov!, the city of San Francisco “uses Open311 to pull data out of their CRM and put it into Azure. Then, our map app control can send information between the two services.”

In addition to the 311 issues, HeyGov! offers two additional modules for governments: a “Code Enforcement” module and a “Generic Maps” module. The Code Enforcement Module allows citizens to report violations of local code and the Generic Maps Module helps citizens view property parcels, land use zones, school zones, demographic data, and other common spatial data sets. Below is an example of a zoning map from Miami.

HeyGov! a great example of how rich information and smooth functionality can come together through Bing Maps and Silverlight. In the next few weeks, HeyGov! will be available on Windows Phone 7, Android, and the iPhone to allow for mobile viewing and requests.

There is an enormous variety of information that people can benefit from when the information is enhanced with geo-spatial context. And with the recent updates to the Map App SDK, it’s even easier to build new Map Apps for Bing Maps.

Thanks for reading and I hope you check out HeyGov!

Brian Hendricks,
Bing Maps