Suggested by 
Jack McMackin
over 2 years ago
I'm NOT talking about an app that allows each of us to follow "hot button" national issues and support the aligned political side locally.
I'm talking about apps that help local citizens get educated (civics 101), stay informed, obtain access to local government services, be helpful to local initiatives when asked, and give feedback & beta test new concepts in partnership with local government leaders.
What apps do this already?
What local communities have really nailed some aspects of the above already?
We all have smart phones, and there is a generation of young people who have a desire to be engaged citizens but don't know how to get started.
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
UX leader, strategist, designer/researcher @ in-between jobs (aka non-compete clause)
I recently went on this search (because I now have much more free time) and found nothing close to a consolidated app nor website for local civic engagement (ie-"pull" model of info curated for focus purpose). Closest is google or duck duck go because everyone else is via city/county/state websites, nonprofits, school and newspaper outlets, etc (ie- "push" model of info broadcasted outward to no one in particular). Yahoo back in the day was closest to this but for whatever reason it didn't click.
I'd be up for sketching out some ideas on this if you have thoughts :). I definitely see "personas" being the "magic button" from a user experience design solution and AI being critical to content crawling and upkeeping broken links. Selling such an app to local, county, state gov would work as well- I was part of a short bid for more local engagement so there is buying interest but city budget fell thru at that time.