Kadima MK launches iPhone app to keep voters connected

Yoel Hasson uses technology to create direct connection with the public.

By REBECCA ANNA STOIL
Your iPhone applications can show you 3-dimensional molecules, help determine compatibility rates with tonight’s hot date, and measure the speed at which your falling (or thrown?) iPhone plunges to the earth.
Now, starting this week, your iPhone can also help you maintain a closer connection with Kadima MK Yoel Hasson, who is launching a “Personal Connection with the Public” application to help you keep in touch.
Hasson teamed up with Umbrella Business Development Inc. to premier the application, which they said would offer citizens some unique resources. The application will be officially launched this week during “iPhone City Israel,” two days of marketing, launching and promoting one of Israel’s growing social status symbols.
Among other services, the application will enable citizens to directly reach to the State Control Committee, which Hasson chairs, to suggest topics for hearings, and to contact the lawmaker himself with ideas for legislation, questions for ministers, or personal requests.
The application also, naturally, allows Hasson to deal a good bit of bragging.
Application owners will be able to receive news regarding legislative initiatives and activities he has sponsored, as well as to watch videos and interviews with Hasson and to access his “Connection with Voters” blog.
In the event that you cannot wait for your run-of-the-mill Facebook application to upload Hasson’s homepage, the application will also allow you to access it, as well as to connect directly with Hasson’s office staff. The “Personal Connection with the Public” application is enabled for both Hebrew and English.
“I believe that there is great importance to the accessibility of public representatives and to the dynamic between a MK and the public,” Hasson explained.
“Therefore, after launching my website, I thought that the iPhone application is an additional way to create direct connection between me and the public.
“The application enables fast access with available information and most important allows people to directly contact me concerning different topics.”
While Hasson is the first MK to have an app to call his own, he is not the only one exploiting the wave of technology that is beginning to sweep the hallowed halls of the Knesset.
In March of this year, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin spoke of an “accessibility revolution” within the Knesset, starting with a massive upgrade of the legislature’s website and leading to tweets from controversial hearings and even Skype-ing into committees.
Knesset director-general Dan Landau said that in coming Knesset sessions, newly hired committee spokesmen will be expected to send Twitter messages to those interested in breaking legislative tidbits. It is possible that citizens will also be able to watch committee hearings live online, and file real-time questions to the committee chairmen during the sessions.