- The Minister of Governance has launched the app as "a free tool for the public providing information in real time"
- Some of its features come from an ideas competition for users that was held to improve the app brought out for the election in 2012
- The "My parliament" option can be used to do simulations and put together alliances between lists
The Minister of Governance and Institutional Relations, Meritxell Borràs, has today launched the Elections 27S app which will enable users to view on their phones or tablets the turnout advances and results of the count for the election to the Parliament of Catalonia to be held this Sunday. "Once again the Government is making available to the public a free tool which provides them with full information in real time," said Minister Borràs.
The Minister pointed out that the app contains features drawn from a participatory process. "In 2013 the Catalan Government ran a competition for ideas to improve the app used for the 2012 election," she said. "The suggestions that got most votes from the public were then evaluated by a group of experts and have been used when designing this app."
Meritxell Borràs described the new features in the Elections 27S app which can be used to track turnout figures and results in detail at various levels (Catalonia, constituencies, counties and municipalities) and compare them with the election in 2012. What´s new this time round is that it also has the option to view them by counties. In addition, users can also bookmark a particular municipality, county or constituency that they want to follow in particular.
The Minister also highlighted other new features that have been added to the app, such as a section with detailed information on the results of the various candidatures including information about votes, the percentage of votes and seats won by each party both in Catalonia as a whole and by constituency. "Based on the votes counted and the corresponding allocation of seats, users can also learn the names of the members elect who will enter the Parliament of Catalonia," she said.
Interaction with users and social media
Another new feature of this app is "My parliament" which users can use to do simulations and set up alliances between candidatures to see if they are achieving a majority based on their number of seats as the count progresses. The alliances can even be specified before election day so users can subsequently track them.
Finally, the results, turnout and "My parliament" can be shared on the most popular social media sites as an image.
Elections 27S is a free mobile app available in Catalan, Spanish and English for iOS and Android and can be downloaded from http://www.parlament2015.cat/ca/app
Ideas competition
The Elections 27S app has been developed largely thanks to the contributions made by users of the app that the Catalan Government brought out for the last election in Catalonia. A few months after the launch of the app, the Government launched its Open Ideas initiative to gather user suggestions and improve the app. In February and March 2013 a website collected suggestions and the ones most voted for by the public and then evaluated by a group of experts have been incorporated into this app. The ideas included are "My parliament" and the list of names of members who will be taking up their seats in the Parliament, which can be viewed in real time.
Parliament 2012 is a free mobile app that the Catalan Government created to follow the Catalan election on 25 November 2012. It was the first app in Europe to be made available by a government to the public to follow election results in real time. In just four days it was downloaded nearly 80,000 times from 120 countries and headed the ranking of free mobile apps downloaded from Apple and Google.