COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, March 08, 2010

MOTION NO.5

MOTION: Councillor C. Brophy

That this Council implements a text notification service, similar to that used for the bin collection service, and for major disruptions the placement of adverts in Daily Newspapers as a standard practice of notification when there is problem with the water supply to houses in the County.

REPORT:

There has been an ongoing campaign to encourage housholders to register their mobile phone numbers and e-mail addresses for notification in relation to Council business. The Council is required under Data Protection responsibilities to request permission from Customers to use their details for specific notification purposes. This permission is not always forthcoming however all contacts with customers involve a request for contact details and permission for notification.

At present, approximately 13,690 Customers have registered for information updates in relation to Refuse Services by text while another 6,500 have registered for information by e-mail. It is, and continues to be standard practice to issue Notifications through media outlets in relation to major disruptions where it is appropriate to do so.

During the recent crisis, the Council engaged a very pro-active campaign of updates through the Council's website. Each day, planned water restrictions were published in  the afternoon while the position on unplanned disruptions through bursts was updated as frequently as hourly at the height of the capacity issues.

The Website continues to be the most effective way of delivering updates to the public on matters that make it necessary to provide very frequent updates. Printed media for example would have been of no significant benefit during the recent water shortages when print deadlines, flexibility and lack of control would have mitigated against the information being presented in the most up to date and informative way.  It would never have allowed for hourly updates which were available on the web.

With the change to the new automated waste advance credit system there was a large volume of queries.  This has resulted in a significant number of additional contact details being provided.  It is preferable, from a cost point of view, to use email as the primary means of communication and, in general, members of the public with whom there was contact were happy to register their details for future use.  In addition email tends to be a more stable form of communication as it tends not to be as disposable as phone ownership.

Statistics for the month of January show that the website provided an effective means of communicating the updates with Users accessing the site 243,000 times (treble the number of sessions in January 2009). Where it is not possible to communicate directly with every resident of the county, the combination of website updates, texts, e-mails etc can get messages out to sufficently large numbers to allow information to spread by word of mouth thereafter.