Our Haringey - new app for reporting dumped rubbish etc

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on October 9, 2013 at 18:05

Justin, a P.S.

For me, one frustrating aspect of your reporting problem would be wondering whether anyone apart from you reported it. Other residents perhaps. Or somebody from Haringey or Veolia spotting the pile of masonry.

The new App should make it easier for the obvious people to do so. Veolia's street cleaners. Traffic wardens and other Haringey staff. Easier, quicker, and less likely to force them to stop and be late for the next task. Though only if provided with a mobile phone with the App loaded and - probably - some training on its use.

But crucially only if the culture changes so that people top-to-bottom in the organisation see it as their responsibility to take that couple of minutes (seconds?)  to snap-&-send.

Mural adjacent to Coombes Croft Library, Tottenham N17.
Partly obscured by self-seeded shrubs and overgrown ivy.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on October 9, 2013 at 18:31

Alan. Actually I though that it would be nice to know how many other folks reported the same problem too(squeaky wheels and all that), and interestingly as I opened the app up for the first time I saw something that looked like a problem in the area possibly already logged (uncollected purple Veolia bags). I did not have time to see if this is what it actually was, but if someone else reports the wall it looks like they too will see my report. Not sure if this will be a plus or minus, if it stops you going through the process of reporting because you think someone else already has, or it is in hand, the council will report less reports of problems and possibly actually get round to solving any issues (the squeaky wheel principle again)....

It would be useful to have some report back that an issue has been logged and (critically) dealt with! Not sure if it does this?

I also thought the ability to take a photo was excellent, it will help anyone looking at the issue to be able to see clearly where a problem is!

As a final point, I went back to the email I received when I reported the original problem. I reported it in mid June Ref No: HC-178624, and I was told someone from buildings control would contact me in 7 days... No such Joy! I hope this does not just become another tool that is not responded to and used effectively.

Oh, and it is on the road, not the school wall.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on October 9, 2013 at 20:32

I half agree about squeaky wheels. If the problem has been reported and is in the process of being tackled, then additional "duplicate" reports could clog up the system. (Failure demand in John Seddon's phrase.)

However, if something is urgent it needs an urgent fix. So a "chaser" isn't a bad idea. On the whole I'd prefer to rely on the good sense of residents in making a judgement about urgency and danger. Which was almost certainly the reason why Building Control was asked to inspect the wall. I assume the worry would have been further collapse of the wall with someone seriously injured.

But of course they mis-framed the problem which had a second part. The member of staff from Building Control should have passed Part 2 to Veolia: removing the masonry from the road. Maybe they did, but it seems it got lost in the system. If you can grit your teeth and bear it, then please re-report the masonry - giving the original reference number.

About squeaky wheels, there's another aspect which occurred to me when I first read about the use of a similar smartphone App in Boston Mass. I think Liz Ixer told me about it. My query was whether this might skew services to better-off neighbourhoods where more people had smartphones; and were perhaps comfortable with using them in the street.

If that sounds a bit negative, here's a very positive potential.  Pupils from a primary school could report street problems. Mulberry School in Tottenham did this at one time. Think of the different learning involved. English, writing, ICT; maps, citizenship etc. And with a bit of luck they take the anti-dumping pro-recycling ideas home to their families.

(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Nick G-T on October 18, 2013 at 16:30

Ant, the bug has indeed been fixed; I've just received an email confirming graffiti I reported has been removed.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Liz on October 22, 2013 at 15:14

So how are we all finding this?

I was rather surprised to see this report of a dumped mattress as closed (and nothing found) written there (by whom?) when I can still see it at the end of my road! On the other hand, I've had contact twice from Frontline on other non-dumping issues I reported using the app. So the reports are going to the right places, it would seem but how are they being acted upon? By contrast, I reported a dump by the more conventional method of the website and that was cleared up within 24 hours by I presume Veolia who must have driven past the mattress to get to it. 

Jury is still out re this app as far as I'm concerned. Seems to be same problems that beset me using LCS before in that it seemed to be better to use councils own report a problem page to get things done even if I couldn't get progress reports.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on October 22, 2013 at 16:33

Seems to me that a false positive like this can distort the stats if it happens too often. For example, re-reported, this might appear as two mattresses collected within the expected timescale. A double success!

This may be a software glitch. Or it may not.  We customers/residents/service users are outside the system.  From our position it's a classic "black box". Somebody inside needs to observe and review "how the work works". 

At least the mattress was eventually collected. Even if, Liz, it needed you to revert to the "legacy" system. 

The worst case would be not just an uncollected mattress slowly rotting on the street, but local residents losing trust in the system's ability to absorb the - presumably - increased demand caused by the app. And then not bothering to report at all.

On a slightly different tack, walking in Harringay yesterday and spotting some open phone cabinets, I wondered if Virgin or BT have their own apps for residents to report cabinets which are open, damaged or have graffiti. I phoned Virgin Media but they weren't aware of such an app. But they took my details and said they'd get back to me.

Anyone else knows?

(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Liz on October 22, 2013 at 17:09

Actually the mattress wasn't collected. There was a second dump outside my house which I reported via the 'traditional' system and was cleared - my point being that to get to dump 2, they had to drive past said mattress which the computer was saying didn't exist. It was still there at 3pm today when I raised the issue with Veolia on Twitter.  

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Mark Pack on November 9, 2013 at 9:50

In my own experience of reporting things to Haringey, these sorts of problems are pretty common - and it's not really a matter of how you report them (email, phone, their website, FixMyStreet etc) but rather of how the reports are managed at Haringey's end.

My current favourite example is Haringey explaining that one reason it took them nearly a year to fix a faulty sign I had reported was that I'd wrongly reported it as an unlit sign. However as I pointed out to them, the photo I sent them of the sign showed no lighting at all on the sign. To have a system that requires me to guess that something isn't there should have been there in order to report it 'correctly' is hardly a sign of a good system...!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Liz on October 22, 2013 at 15:25

Actually, thinking it about it, Karen, is there any way we can get some kind of stats on the use of the app and an assessment by council officers/Veolia management of how effective it is proving to be ?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Alex on October 28, 2013 at 21:44

I might be missing something obvious, but what does the colour coding mean? I reported a couple of things to test the app, and the reports have variously been marked red, amber and green...

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Pressdesk at Haringey Council on November 8, 2013 at 12:54

Hi

It’s good to read the discussion taking place about the Our Haringey app; we’d like to answer some of your questions (our apologies that this is belated).

Firstly, as Gordon suggested, Our Haringey is indeed a customised version of Love Clean Streets. That customisation includes a Haringey look and feel, but more importantly it means it's been integrated with the systems we use to allocate work to the teams who fix the problems reported, whether they are council teams or a contractor like Veolia.

So when you use it to report a problem - that's sent automatically to the people who'll fix it, making the process more efficient.

In response to Aidan's question about reporting problems outside the borough - if your GPS shows that you're outside Haringey, your report will be redirected to the appropriate council automatically, so no need to worry about straying outside of our borough borders.

To those of you asking about showing reports on a map – the map here http://our.haringey.gov.uk/Reports/LiveMap shows all the reports logged via the app (with images and status of the problem). However, we have had an issue recently with reports that have been fixed and closed still being shown as open, but we’re close to resolving this.

Despite rigorous testing of the app over the summer, we’ve also discovered a technical glitch in our systems over the last few weeks which we’ve now resolved. We apologise if this means we have been slow to respond to any of your reports – this should now be fixed.

We appreciate that there are some issues that need ironing out and we'll continue to work with the app developers on that. We appreciate your feedback so if you send any issues to frontline@haringey.gov.uk we can collate them and see that bugs are fixed, and requests for improvements are considered when looking at longer term development.

Finally, it’s great to see lots of you using the app, we hope you like it enough to spread the word.

Thanks.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Seema Chandwani on November 9, 2013 at 1:20

I love this app... :) Although there is a difference between the app and the response. So Jury is out on the response as I haven't had one yet, but mine is an ongoing issue of rubbish dumping and I guess it will be 'complete' when they give the residents above shops a bin. 

The live map of reports is good, but I prefer the grid view http://our.haringey.gov.uk/Reports You can check by ward on this too. 

In answer to [part of] your question Liz. The grid view shows that there has been 288 reports. Of which 49 are from Harringay Ward, 6 from Seven Sisters, 5 from Stroud Green and 14 from St Ann's. (As of 9th Nov). Obviously as I'm competitive, so I will now seek to increase 'Team St Ann's score' this week! ;)

The only "problem" I had with the app, was the map. I don't really like having my iPhone out in public (police advise you not to due to snatching) as I was street robbed about a year ago. So I tend to take the picture and then complete the report when i get home or on the bus

The map does pin you to where you are at the time of reporting. You can move the pin, but its a 'tricky lil sod' and was moving the map not pin. It was actually frustrating, like threading cotton through the eye of a needle! Anyway, I resolved this by turning location services off for this app and typing the address on the box instead. 

There is a video, using an animation of Alan Stanton when he was a young man, for people wondering WT Fudge we're talking about :)

 Ps: Mr Stanton? You don't have a mobile? I'm dragging you to Carphone Warehouse next weekend. In fact, we might as well get that tattoo you talk about done too. I can see it now, on your forearm "I prefer Fix My Street" in Chinese script. #LoveYouMrS ;) xXx

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next ›
• Page