My Marco App Helps Residents Communicate with City

When the City of Marco Island launched its new My Marco app on Wednesday, June 15, only the most optimistic of people could have anticipated the immediate positive response it had received from the public.

“It seems to be easy for our residents,” said Casey Lucius, assistant city manager. "We’re getting positive feedback. On the day it was launched we got over 600 downloads.”

Lucius couldn’t be happier with the way the app is performing for the city.

"So far people have been quite active,” Lucius said. "Actually, more so than we thought. Which is good.”

Lucius said the activity has been spread across the different functions of the app, but that the Code Enforcement and Public Works department have seen a lot of activity. She can monitor the app from her desk.

"We have a website we can go to see the workflow that’s coming in,” she said. "And so far, it’s been pretty significant. We’ve had several requests that have come in for Code Enforcement, several that have come in for Public Works, our water/sewer department, irrigation leaks.”

Some look at Marco Island’s age demographics and assume something like an app might have end user issues. Lucius feels that’s a myth and cites examples.

“One thing that we’ve found is that there seems to be a little bit of a myth that Marco Island has an older population and they struggle to do things online,” Lucius said. "We’ve found that is not the case. All of our permitting is online now. Building permits. They don’t have any issues. We found with the recent Citizen Survey, which was all online, we expected about 500 participants and we ended up with 3,000. We have a very active social media community, which is good and bad,” she said with a laugh. "Sometimes we pause to make sure things are going to be accessible to all our residents. That’s our goal, we want it to be accessible to everyone. We find it’s really not an obstacle for our community.”

Lucius sees two major uses for the app.

"The app really has two functions,” Lucius said. "First, for residents to send information to us. The other is for us to be able to send information to our residents. I think that’s where it’s most helpful. Right now, we rely primarily on email and social media. Social media is always evolving, but even that seems a little antiquated now. By pushing information out through the app, that seems more instantaneous, and that will be helpful for our residents.”

Lucius feels the timing of the release of the app couldn’t have been better.

"I’m definitely excited about it,” Lucius said. "And the timing of the roll out is good since we’re coming into hurricane season. It will be a real asset for us to be able to get information out to the public. We already have the Code Red Alert System. We use that for real emergencies. We don’t want to overuse that for information. We want to use the summertime to really put it out there, test it, get our staff used to it. Get our permanent residents used to it. So that way in the winter, when we have a higher population, we’ll have all the systems in place and ready to go for even greater levels of use of the app.”

Lucius sees the My Marco app as being particularly important for getting information out to residents immediately.

"I actually think it will be the most helpful in terms of the notification system,” Lucius said. "Getting out information about city events. So, like when we do concerts in the park, we do parks programming, or when we’re having a fun city event, we can push that information out to our residents. When there’s emergencies, streets are closed, or something like that, we can get the information out."

Lucius likes the fact that end users don’t seem to be having any trouble using the app. She uses code enforcement as an example.

"This actually allows somebody to snap a photo,” Lucius said, "they can upload the photo and GPS provides the exact location and time of the report. If they use the app, we have more precise information for code enforcement. The app gives the exact GPS information of where that person is standing when they take a photo. If they don’t take a photo, there’s a map and they can pin their location on the map.”

Remarkably, Lucius reports that there has only been one hiccup with the app so far.

"So far we’ve only had one hiccup,” Lucius said. "This is regarding an update that we’re waiting for. I’ve heard this from a couple of employees and also from a couple of residents. There is a little “1" here in the upper right-hand corner of the app. After you click on the notification, that little “1" should go away, but it’s not going away. The company said they have to do an update, and once that goes through, that little number 1 will go away."