'Where' matters: shaping public services for the mobile citizen.

• Author: Leinbach, Joe
• Position: COMMENTARY

What's one of the most reported-on--yet least understood--transformational technologies for public services to citizens? Hint: It's at the center of a new "location arms race" involving Apple, Google, and other technology companies. Answer: location-based services, made possible by a combination of geospatial technologies and mobile devices. And while the media is focused on the map, the real story is the value of location-based data. For service providers and advertisers, where someone is located is as important, if not more important, than who they are.

Three-quarters of U.S. smartphone owners use location-based services, according to a recent study, and every interaction teaches the entity providing the service about its user community. By building a large dataset of users' locations, search habits, and preferences, mobile search providers like Google and Apple or social networks like Foursquare and Facebook can customize an experience that users enjoy almost as much as advertisers do.

The secret to customization is "context"--combining a history of someone's preferences with the preferences of thousands of other individuals who are searching for the same route or restaurant from the same place you're standing.

The public sector has a similar opportunity to customize services for citizens and employees by engaging with the growing wealth of location-based data. Many governments possess a robust GIS capability, but it's typically far removed from day-to-day interactions with citizens. As these geospatial technologies make the transition to Web applications, cloud-based sharing will allow agency managers to incorporate location data into decision making. The result is government interacting with citizens, and its own employees, in entirely new ways:

Open Infrastructure Mapping. Maps organize massive amounts of data around a common attribute or location, and they provide a starting point for discussing tough decisions with citizens and other government stakeholders. In New York City, a partnership between the mayor's office and Columbia University led to the development of a digital model that shows the manner in which nearly every building in the city consumes energy, distinguishing among heating, lighting, and other purposes.

Seeing the relationship between energy use and community design can help policymakers and the public alike understand how energy usage relates to social and environmental factors.

Passive Data Collection. To map...