Company Xplore plans pivotal communication role during COVID-19 emergency

The Xplore Town App is a free to download app created with the initial concept of imparting information on local attractions, events, shopping, accommodation, hikes and trails, cultural and historical information as well as tourist information.

With the arrival of Covid-19, Xplore has been working in collaboration with The Wild Geese, an East Galway Task Force, co-founded by Deputy Anne Rabbitte, TD for East Galway and Elodie Golden, an experienced digital project manager, to expand the app as a trusted digital tool for communication during the crisis.

According to Deputy Rabbitte: “Our mission was simple, to solve the challenges faced by our rural towns, villages, and communities who were on their knees, from town to town, village to village, community to community.

The Wild Geese community team consists of seasoned leaders and volunteers with a fervent and passionate interest in the renewal of the main towns and villages of East Galway. They have been working very closely with Xplore over the past 18 months with a view to creating a digital infrastructure for the towns of East Galway, onboarding the towns, villages and communities onto this unique digital ecosystem conceived, created and nurtured by the Galway-based Xplore.

Elodie Golden said: “Since the COVID-19 crisis began, it quickly became apparent to me that a robust digital infrastructure built over 9 years, on battle-tested technologies and frameworks, could play a pivotal role as an important trusted digital tool for communication during the crisis.”

Deputy Anne Rabbitte said: “I quickly realised the benefits of adopting the town and community app to the Public Health Emergency making it easier for government agencies and locals to communicate swiftly, securely and with tailored messages to our towns, villages and communities”.

Deputy Rabbitte continued: “In particular, the opportunity was there for state bodies such as the Irish Government, HSE, Garda Siochana, County Council to have secure access to the dashboard, to send tailored push notifications to all or to a selected number of locations on behalf of stakeholders”.

“On the community level, access would be available for communities to publish local content, create and share timely, accurate informative updates to volunteer initiatives, news articles, list essential business listings, volunteer services open in the community featuring turn by turn navigation and one-touch call and email”

Deputy Rabbitte concluded “I envisage the roll-out of the community app in two phases.  Phase 1: Covid-19 Emergency and Phase 2: Covid-19 Recovery when all of the retail, hike and trails, tourism features are turned back on and businesses are supported digitally in getting back on their feet.  The app is ready to scale with an experienced digital team behind it, to drive it forward and support our communities in and agile and expeditious manner.”

Talks are currently at advanced stages to roll out the platform to every county in Ireland and moving the Galway App to Xplore which will allow users, regardless of where they are, to download the one app and from there, users simply enable location services or select a region to stay local. The Xplore app is also available currently for a number of Munster towns having been rolled out in conjunction with McCarthy Insurance Group and local Credit Unions.