New Haringey online mapping tool

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on January 24, 2018 at 8:49

I noticed that it’s a Beta, testing version so please get back to Haringey about improvements and additions.

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Permalink Reply by Adrian Hackney on January 26, 2018 at 8:07

I'm not impressed so far. Google maps does a better job of most of these things and provides directions, and sizes the map to fit the context, and provides links , and has a rollover to provide more information and has user ratings of each of the facilities and has a direct to link to street view where Haringey only provides a near miss in a new window.. See, for example, the images for "dentists" below. Google is streets ahead.

On planning applications I still prefer using the partial post code in the search servlet. Google doesn't do planning applications. Neither application does Neighbourhood Forums.

I'm not sure I want my tax dollars spent bringing this Haringey lookalike up to Google standard.

Q1 What is the cost justification. How much money is this going to save in visits and phone calls to Haringey staff and how badly is the budget going to over run before it does so?

Q2. Is this a Haringey initiative or is every borough in the country doing it?

Q3. Is there a privatisation behind this? Surely not unless some IT company has been given carte blanche to do the development.

My initial thought is to pull the plug on this before too much more money is wasted.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on January 26, 2018 at 8:26

All of this data already exists in Haringey Council (and all other local authorities) and is geomapped so this is simply a way of allowing public access to some of the data that council staff already use.  Surely having more data open to citizens' use is a good thing?

As this is still in the early stages what would be good would be to feedback on what you would like to see that Haringey hold and how it can be displayed.  In a previous incarnation I worked with tree officers in a local authority and they made their mapped data available so you could check which trees had tree protection orders so know when something dodgy was going on.  You clicked on the tree location, got details of the species, when the order was made, when the next works were scheduled and so on.  Again this was simply using data that had to be mapped anyway to allow for maintenance and so forth.

There's a huge amount of information held by local authorities that already is mapped.  It would be great to see more of this available in a way that is accessible to anyone.

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