An internship at the Department of Transport was the Right Move!

An internship at the Department of Transport was the Right Move!

Interning at the Department of Transport I have had the opportunity to be involved in the promotion, maintenance and ongoing development of a new Transport app, Right Move Perth.

Right Move Perth is a new free smartphone App created by the Transport portfolio – Department of Transport, Main Roads WA and the Public Transport Authority (Transperth) – to better inform Perth commuters regarding incidents, conditions and events that may impact their journey within the Perth metropolitan area.

The new App provides real-time information on incidents, including roadworks, crashes, traffic signal faults, to train and bus service disruptions, major events taking place, project information and weather warnings. Right Move Perth also lets you save your favourite routes and notifies you of incidents that might affect your trip around metropolitan Perth.

 

 

Right Move Perth is available on both iOS (Apple) and Android platforms and can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play for free. If you haven’t download them now!!

 

Currently I am working with my internship coordinator on rolling out a communications strategy for Right Move Perth.

 

This has included:

 

Recruiting and supervising eight flyer distributers

On April 1 and 3 eight distributers recruited from Integrity staffing sported Right Move Perth T-shirts and distributed iPhone shaped flyers throughout the CBD during peak morning, lunch and afternoon periods. I was tasked with liaising with Integrity staffing to find suitable people for the job, mapping out the locations for the staff to be placed around the CBD and also periodically checked on the distributors throughout the day supplying them with additional materials and answering any questions they had.

 

After each day of flyer distribution a rise in the app downloads was recorded through google analystics which was satisfying to know that the work I was doing was contributing to the success of the app.

Twitter page

@rightmoveperth is the official Twitter page for the app. My internship coordinator and I worked on a tweet schedule which included daily tweets about events, planned maintenance, CBD projects and tips for using the app. These were then entered into a system called hootdeck which automatically tweets that are scheduled on a certain day and time, pretty cool!

 

This task also involved responding to any questions or feedback tweeted on the page and retweeting appropriate posts from MRWA and Transperth pages. Initially I was incredibly nervous when completing this task as I was conscious of tweeting correct and professional information with no spelling or grammatical errors to the 575 followers of the page (which includes news and radio pages, perthonalities and members of the general public), I also didn’t want to retweet anything controversial (political or otherwise) that could result in negative media or perceptions from followers. However once I got the hang of it I actually enjoyed the interaction with users and reading their comments on the app.

 

 

Feedback email:

Similar to this I also respond to any queries or feedback that comes to rightmoveperth@transport.wa.gov.au  the Right Move Perth email address. This is the primary source of communication for users to reach the Right Move Perth team. This involved coordinating responses, contributing to the resolution of issues and appropriately referring issues for resolution.

If you have downloaded the app and have any queries or want to provide feedback, make sure you email the above address and I will be happy to respond to you!!

Over the next few weeks I will be working with the Right Move Perth team to decide development options for stage two of the app which will include things such as parking information and cycling.