ManKiwwa App: Empowering citizen-led reporting, bags 3 national innovation awards

ManKiwwa, Sri Lanka’s only self-help citizen-led governing app bags three awards for innovation and social impact at Sri Lanka’s top ICT awards. ManKiwwa won Silver award at National Best Quality ICT Award (NBQSA) 2018 organised by BCS Sri Lanka, won Merit award for Inclusion and Empowerment at e-Swabhimani 2018, Digital Social Impact Awards organised by ICTA and 1st Runner up award for Best Use of Mobile in the Information Industry at the SLT 01 Awards organised by Sri Lanka Telecom.

ManKiwwa is a public incident, emergency reporting and call for help app developed by Kubeira IT Park Ltd. The app is built to empower the public to take initiative and action on a number of incidents and emergency situations that may seem helpless. It is also built to provide security and protection to the public in emergency or dangerous situations where they can call for immediate help.

“This app addresses most of the day-to-day concerns we face as citizens and helps bring them to the attention of those who can be of assistance,” said Shohan Kulasuriya, Founder ManKiwwa and Director Kubeira IT Park Ltd. and Kubeira Holdings Ltd.

He said that the biggest barrier for authorities to help citizens is the disconnection between them and the citizens. By bridging this gap with ManKiwwa, authorities can swiftly engage multiple types of resources to manage and address different types of incidents at a fraction of time.

“It’s just simple, the public can download the ‘ManKiwwa’ app from App store or Play store for free and just start reporting,” Kulasuriya said.

ManKiwwa app supports a variety of situation and personal emergencies promptly notifying the relevant authorities in concern. Some possible situations include robbery, fights, dengue suspects, shooting, violence, blown street lamps, piled garbage, dead or collapsed persons, broken roads, floods, cyclones, landslides, earthquake, illegal activities, heavy rain, broken water pipes or sewage, anonymous parcels, lost and missing persons, even personal emergencies such as animal attacks, electricity breakdowns or notify your loved ones in an emergency.

The app allows image and video capturing and reporting to relevant local authority or emergency services, while identifying the geo location of the incident or emergency. The app also allows response monitoring for users and a host of planning, activating and response management features for authorities.

One of the key features of the ManKiwwa app is it’s an anonymous reporting feature where users do not require to disclose any information about themselves. However, the user can type personal information in the description section if they so wish. This feature has been built in to encourage citizens to take initiative and to promote a reporting culture.

The information is reported real time without delays to activate responses from authorities. Currently, response to incident reports take hours to be activated and in some instances days. The company believes that this new app will cut down this delay to a few minutes thereby ensuring speedier assistance in any personal or public emergency.

“We believe in the concept of citizen led government in this day and age and empowering citizens to report incidents as and when they happens. At the same time, empower the authorities to swiftly act on those situations to solve and help,” Kulasuriya said. “We provide this service free to the public as a social responsibility towards the nation and hope the Government authorities will accept this platform to manage the public issues.”

Kubeira IT Park has tied up with the Gampaha Municipal Council to provide this innovative service and plans to partner other local and Government authorities as well as emergency and disaster management services island-wide to provide speedy responses to ManKiwwa reports.