Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Council App to report stuff
I was fishing round on the council website and it seems they have an 'app' that you can use to report stuff.. has anyone used this? had any experiences with?
Tags for Forum Posts: love clean streets app, our haringey app
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Yes it's been around for a couple of years and is a quick and efficient way of greying things sorted. Thanks for flagging it up again.
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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"Council App to report stuff"
I've been waiting for ages for a Council App to report Staff.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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WHILE this may be good as far as it goes, it's important to remember that a sizeable chunk of society is not going to use these devices, nor post on social media, nor even use a computer:
More than 12 million fall into UK digital skills gap
According to this 'heat map', 10% of adults in our Borough have never been online.
The elderly and disabled did not feature in the recent £20K Council video, the Haringey Story.
The video asserts of Haringey: It’s an attitude, not a place. Are you in?
It seems that those on the other side of the digital divide, may not be "in".
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Clive, it's a good app. which works effectively and offers an option to up to 90% of Haringey's population, according to your stats. I'm unconvinced that the job of the opposition to snipe at every opportunity. That sort of behaviour puts me off the local Lib Dems.
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Hugh if you read my earlier post carefully you won't find a word of criticism about the "app".
However, your "… option [for] up to 90% of Haringey's population", might mean less than 1% in actual practice.
I'm simply asking you and others to remember that a significant part of the Borough is beyond the reach of such a facility. They are not amongst your 10,000. The elderly and disabled appear to have been forgotten in the Haringey Story.
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'Damning with faint praise' is the term one might use, Clive.
I am certainly very aware of levels of digital literacy as well as simple literacy. Given the publicity the issue has had, I'm assuming that most other are too.
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Hugh, the other point I'd make is that it's all very well having this and multiple other channels to report problems to the Council. However, does the capacity exist to follow through? Currently, there is currently a huge backlog of work to be done that has piled up in the Borough.
If a certain dead flat rat in the Borough is not collected soon, I will publicise.
It's one thing to report a problem conveniently and instantly. It's another thing entirely for it to be actioned. If it was up to me, I'd transfer resources from the PR department to the area of more practical, meaningful use to residents.
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The reason I like the app is because it's quick and easy to use and the report is usually quickly actioned.
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I've used the app many times to report things that I otherwise probably wouldn't have, and invariably they've been sorted within a reasonable time frame.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Clive, if the app was the only method of reporting a problem I would agree, but it isn't
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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I'm all for encouraging as many people as possible to report stuff. Either through the council's mobile app or using grandad's old-fashioned desktop machines and a free website such as FixMyStreet.
But there are some drawbacks.
One is that you sometimes report things, get a prompt acknowledgement and action taken. Only for the same problem to recur on successive occasions. In other words, there's a pattern, the causes of which need investigating and understanding, so preventative action "upstream" can be tried.
Another way of describing this process is to see it as the need to "reframe" a problem. This requires skills and a willingness to learn. Not something every Haringey team excels at. And this problem gets steadily worse as staff are reduced. Often with more experienced staff deciding they've had enough.
If problems are repeated, and learning and reframing doesn't happen, this is often the point at which people who were enthusiastic about reporting decide to give up. They're happy to be good citizens who stop to report a pile of rubbish bags. They aren't prepared to volunteer to be Citizen Sisyphus endlessly sending reports of rubbish redumped. Especially when the Council's own systems fail to report stuff.
Enthusiasm can wane even more quickly if particular street problems are reported and then for several months . . . . nothing happens.
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particular street problems are reported and then for several months . . . . nothing happens
I think this is more likely when a problem doesn't fall neatly into a neat slot or pre-set category, although the app does seem to cover the obvious ones. I reported a broken fence via two web pages: first the official one then later, when nothing happened, via FixMyStreet.
The difficulty was that, was it down to Parks? or Highways responsibility? or Home for Haringey?
It was eventually fixed after 12 months since I first reported it.
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