COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

south dublin county council crest

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, September 12, 2011

QUESTION NO. 14

QUESTION: Councillor D. Looney

To ask the Manager to report on the fixyourstreet.ie service, its rollout and consultation with public representatives on the site, and to ask if he will extend the same guarantee with regard to a two-day response time offered to site users with regard to reported issues to Councillor representations?

REPLY:

The Fixyourstreet initiative was launched on 2nd August 2011 to enable citizens to report issues of a non emergency nature to Local Authorities. South Dublin County Council, is the pilot Local Authority for its operation which is part of the current Programme for Government for National Recovery.  The following is an extract from the Programme with specific reference to the initiative:-

"Reforming Local Government    -       In local services, we will establish a website – www.fixmystreet.ie – to assist residents in reporting problems with street lighting, drainage, graffiti, waste collection and road and path maintenance in their neighbourhoods, with a guarantee that local officials will respond within two working days".

The pilot scheme is being very well received by the public since its introduction.  As at 5th September there have been 1323  reports and comments posted and 1264 responses issued under the relevent categories.   The primary commitment,  to respond  to reports from residents within a two day timeframe is the most obvious challenge, and this deadline is being met.

The follow up, and the action required to resolve issues on the ground, is being integrated into our internal work programmes throughout all departments, in particular our Roads, Environment and Parks Departments.  As at 5th September 2011 109 commitments given under this system have been completed.   The site will continue to operate in the South Dublin County for the pilot period of 3 months but our colleagues in the Counties countrywide appear very interested in getting involved.  

Fixyour street has been designed to cover three stages of development.   The first development is the facility to submit and respond to web queries. The second is the development of the smart phone application which should be in place by the end of the pilot period. This will give an additional functionality for customers to send a photo direct to the site and provide their Councils with photographic evidence of the scale of the problem being reported.  The third phase will be the use of QR codes: a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) designed to be read by smartphones which was designed to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

The Fixyourstreet initiative is expected to have a very positive impact on the delivery of our services and the resolution of the issues reported.  From the Councils perspective it provides us with tools to co-ordinate effective and efficient allocation of our resources and assists with monitoring areas with specific problems such as graffiti, illegal dumping, leaks and drainage problems, road conditions, trees and grass issues and  and street lighting'

The concept of Fixyourstreet system has already been in operation within South Dublin County Council for a considerable period of time, with 23,132 webqueries being submitted and responded to since 1st January 2010 as follows:

The Council's on-line Membersreps system has been in place since April 2007.   It is a centralised store for Members queries, responses and associated documents. Version 2 was released in 2010 which provides for the creation and management of commitments to elected members.  Functionality exists which permits approved commitments or holding responses to be sent to Elected Members and commitments are entered on a template pdf letter which is automatically created.  An SEO or AO approves the commitment and letters are emailed to the Elected Member and visible on MembersReps. The representation deadline is extended to the commitment deadline on MembersRep and an email reminder issues on the commitment reminder date to the commitment owner and the commitment monitor.   The level of representation through this system since 1st January 2010 has been as follows:

The protocol for responses to Councillor's public representations queries is as follows : Acknowledgement issues immediately and a comprehensive reply issues within 10 working days, while our Customer charter currently provides as follows: Acknowledgement within 3 working days and issue a full reply within 15 working days. If not possible to achieve this we will write stating when we hope to be in a position to reply.  If the pilot is successfully rolled out our Customer Charter will be amended to reflect the response period as committed to in the Programme for Government for National Recovery. 

On a general note the Fixyourstreet pilot differs from the Membersreps system in that FIXYOURSTREET is designed to deal with non-urgent issues relative in the main to the public realm (trees/ grass etc) and does not deal with personal / individual issues.