Billions Down the Drain: The Fiasco of Local Government Apps

It has been confirmed that most public mobile applications developed by some local governments are being criticized as budget waste.

There are numerous cases of local governments investing large budgets into app development, only to neglect and eventually discard them due to low usage. This has led to increasing criticism that local government app development is merely a form of wasteful public administration.

In 2021, as COVID-19 was rampant, Gangwon Province in South Korea launched its delivery application. Named Order Now, this public app was developed at a time when delivery orders were especially high due to strengthened government quarantine measures and restrictions on gatherings, making it difficult to dine out.

At the time, high delivery platform fees were controversial, and Gangwon Province reportedly developed a public app to reduce commission fees for small business owners. Although Order Now was anticipated to be as popular as a virtuous delivery app with no commission fees, listing fees, or advertising fees, the actual operation of the app appears to have been challenging.

This is likely because Order Now, a public app within Gangwon Province, had to compete with major delivery apps like Baemin and Yogiyo. During its operation, Gangwon Province reportedly spent approximately $2.2 million on promotion and app-specific discount coupons.

Despite the considerable budget, the cumulative performance until the end of last year was estimated at 3,280 affiliated stores and about 116,000 registered users. The number of orders was about 780,000, which equates to approximately 34,000 orders per month. This means that each store received about 10 orders per month. As such, the effectiveness of the local government’s public app has been minimal.

Eventually, Gangwon Province declared the end of its public app service in December of last year. Regarding the termination of the public app service, Gangwon Province cited the “recovery phase of daily life with COVID-19, activation of dining out, and expansion of affordable private services,” without mentioning the poor performance.

Similarly, Pyeongchang County also launched its own public app, AR Pyeongchang Travel with Snowball. So far, the cumulative number of registered users is around 1,100, with about 20 new users per month.

At the time, Pyeongchang County reportedly invested about $2.9 million into developing this app. However, the app was criticized for not downloading on some devices, suggesting problems with the development and causing inconvenience for users.

It seems common for local governments to invest large budgets into creating public apps, only to discard them later. Government and local authorities have invested between $30,000 to $4.5 million in app development, but many apps have been discontinued within a few years, except for a few with high demand.

For instance, in 2020, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries spent $34,000 to create underwater construction robot experience game content, but it only had 130 users and was discarded in 2022. Also, the Yeongju City Smart Village Broadcast developed by Yeongju City in 2020 started service four years ago, but the cumulative number of downloads until last year was only 175, making it the least used among local government-developed apps.

Yeongju City has not yet announced whether it will discard the public app, but it is speculated to happen soon. Additionally, the Pohang Market app run by Pohang City has also been struggling with low demand, with only about 600 downloads in the 12 years since its launch in 2013.

Application development experts state that “indiscriminate development and operation of public apps is a waste of taxpayer money. Local governments need to strengthen their review from the planning stage of the app, and after distribution, there is a need to improve the system by thoroughly evaluating the performance.”

There is also criticism suggesting that local governments did not conduct proper market research before developing the app. They are criticized for being blinded by the launch of the app without conducting app market research. Additionally, local government promotions were not properly executed, resulting in users not even knowing about the existence of public apps.