Engaging constituents – you’re doing it wrong!
In an earlier post, I compared one of mySociety’s sites to another with very similar functionality which had been commissioned by a group of councils, and concluded that mySociety were living up to their aim of “showing the public sector how to use the internet most efficiently to improve lives”.
This week, Paul Clark MP (Gillingham, also Minister for Transport) announced, on Twitter no less, that he was working on “[his] version of FixMyStreet”, and requested feedback about the site.
There are numerous things here to be applauded, not least that an MP is using several new media channels to engage in conversation with his constituents. However, the same question as before comes to mind – is this site going to do anything new, or anything better, than the mySociety site that it replicates?
Perhaps it will target a wider range of reports than FixMyStreet; perhaps users will feel more comfortable using the familiar Google Maps, if that’s what the developers plump for; time will tell.
For what it’s worth, I can’t escape the feeling that a prominent link to FixMyStreet – like the one to the left – would fulfill the needs of both the provider and the users of PaulClarkMP.co.uk, and would take a tiny fraction of the time to implement, but I look forward to being proved wrong.
Still, at least Mr Clark cites FixMyStreet as the example he’s trying to emulate, rather than Medway Council’s own website.
Not pretty? All the labels are unreadable when viewing it on my Mac in Firefox. And for some reason it is an applet.
Page title: “Get it Sorted with Paul Clark MP”. There’s your reason for doing another site, right there.
And, of course, he gets to have a bash at various local politicians of other political stripes in the write-ups.
“This disused / unusable play area on Gillingham’s Otway Street has been left derelict and in a very poor condition for several years. The Council have done very little to improve the site.”
(Medway Council is Conservative-controlled.)
Oh wow. I haven’t seen anything that broken on the web in years. I’m almost tempted to fire up Internet Explorer to see if it works in at least one browser. Ouch.
Daniel, that did occur to me, but if it’s a Java Applet, it ought to be equally broken for everyone, I think. I’d be pleased to have this confirmed though, if anybody can. (I stand here surrounded by Macs with Firefox!)
Yup, it’s unreadable in Firefox 3.5.3 on WinXP but fine (if you like that windows 95 austerity look) in IE8.
On the wider point – yes, it’s really annoying when local/nat govt replicates something that’s already been done perfectly well ;~)
James, really?! What happened to “write once, run everywhere”?
On my Mac (OS X 10.6) it produces wrong and completely different results in Opera 10 and Safari 4. In the former case the page looks OK until one notices the absence of a ‘submit’ button. In the latter Safari shows a acrewed up version of a ‘general enquiries’ form.