A commission from the Welsh Government has resulted in new functionality for Mapumental, which now has the capability to display multiple points and to produce RAW data compatible with GIS applications. Here’s how it happened.

How accessible is your nearest school, post office, or GP’s surgery? In Wales, that’s not always a simple question: the country’s mountainous landscapes, rural populations, and sometimes infrequent bus services can mean that those without cars are rather cut off from public service provision.

But of course, like any other authority, the Welsh Government has an obligation to quantify just how accessible their services are.

For many years, they have done so using a number of different methods. Some of these involve literally millions of point to point calculations – so, naturally, when Bill Oates, Head of Geography & Technology, Knowledge Services at the Welsh Government, approached Mapumental, he was keen to discover whether we could simplify things.

We were keen to try it, too – plotting multiple points would add a whole new slew of possibilities to Mapumental. Previously, Mapumental has been all about travel from a single point, and this functionality would bring new applications across all kinds of industries and users.

There’s only one way to find out

The sensible way forward was to pick a single service and see what we could do. One of the government’s open data sets showed positioning of all the secondary schools in the country, and would give us a very good indication of how manageable the task would be across all other provisions.

So we set ourselves this aim: to display the shortest transit time to get to any secondary school in Wales, from any point in that country.

This project was not like the map we made for the Fire Protection Association last year, with its postcode input and interactive sliders. It bore more relation to our static maps, but with the additional dimension that the single map would have multiple points plotted on it. Each point would display its own associated journey times, and where travel to one school was quicker than to another, it would have to override the data of the school that was further away.

And here’s the (very pretty) result

Transit times by public transport to secondary schools in Wales, with an arrival time of 9:00am.

Time bands are in 15-minute increments, with red areas being those where schools are accessible within a 15-minute journey (the centres of the red dots therefore also represent the positions of the schools).

Purple areas are those where journey time is between 1.75 and 2 hours, and the colours in between run in the order you see bottom right of the map. White areas (much of which are mountainous and sparsely-populated) are outside the two-hour transit time.

But there’s more – data for GIS

Plotting all the schools on a single map required quite a bit of modification to Mapumental, but there was another important part of the project that also had to be worked on, if the output was to meet all the needs of the Welsh Government.

They needed to be able to export the raw transit time data to their own GIS tools – the tools that they use to feed into official statistics. This allows the transit time data to be  combined with other datasets, such as population density, for in-depth analysis.

We added a feature which allows Mapumental to produce what is known as a ‘raster grid’ output – basically, an enormous matrix that gives every pixel on the map a travel time value. To do this, we used the open source GRASS format.

What’s next?

Bill Oates is keen to see where this project can go:

“I’m really excited at the prospect of combining the power of Mapumental with our open data, and fully understanding how accessible Welsh public services are by public transport.”

 

To him, the benefits are clear:

“Mapumental’s approach is significantly quicker than our current methods, so this work will help save us time as well as providing a more engaging output.

 

“We hope that future work with mySociety will give us a sustainable approach to calculating the accessibility of local shops, hospitals, post offices and other services on an ongoing basis to help ensure that we’re meeting the needs of our citizens.”

 

We’re looking to build on our success, and offer this service to others – initially on request but via our API as soon as we can. We’ll keep you posted as to our progress.
You can see multiple-point mapping in action, on our Mapumental Property project – now the tool allows house-hunters to take more than one person’s commute into consideration when choosing where to live.

Who might use Mapumental?

Now that Mapumental can plot transit times from multiple points, and provide RAW data for GIS applications, we have great potential for use by anyone interested in travel and accessibility. That could be in central and local government strategy, town planning, architectural consultancy, transport provision, large enterprises looking to save on parking, or start-ups in the green transport space…to name but a few.

Could Mapumental help you with your mapping needs? If so, please do drop us a line at hello@mysociety.org.

Photo of Welsh school bus (bws ysgol) by Aqwis (CC)

We were recently invited to the LGA annual conference to exhibit FixMyStreet for Councils in Nesta’s Innovation Zone along with a lot of interesting social enterprises.

At one memorable point, we each had the opportunity to pitch to the surrounding crowds. Having to drum up interest from people passing through made me feel somewhat like a travelling salesman, but I channelled my semi-theatrical background and that seemed to do the trick.

As one councillor said to me incredulously: “Why doesn’t every council use this?” If you’d like to see what inspired such a comment, here’s my presentation (click through and scroll to the bottom of the page if you’d like to see the accompanying notes, too).

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We’ll be putting all our presentations, of every kind, on our Slideshare account from now on, so do subscribe if that’s of interest. Just click the orange ‘follow’ button on that page.

Need FixMyStreet for your own council? Find out more here.

It’s known for being one of the cleanest and most efficient cities on earth – but even Zürich suffers from potholes and graffiti.

Zürich’s residents can now report infrastructure faults via their city council’s own dedicated installation of the FixMyStreet platform: Züri wie neu, which translates as ‘Zürich: Good As New’.

For Zürich, it’s a new online channel for its infrastructure reports. Meanwhile, for mySociety it’s further proof that our platform can be adapted to any jurisdiction, language, and geography.

We spoke to GIS Project Managers Tobias Brunner and André Graf about the process of installation, and whether or not the launch has been a success.

How it all began

“The project came about as the result of a government competition,” explains Tobias. “Through the eZürich vision, they solicited ideas that would help the city use ICT (Information and Communications Technology).

“FixMyZürich, as the idea was initially presented, was one of the top three suggestions. It clearly matched the competition’s stated aims of increasing transparency and modernising communication channels. Plus there was a strong likelihood that it would also increase civic participation and improve the image of the council – wins all round.”

But Switzerland has a reputation throughout the world for being spotless and efficient – and could Zürich, which ranks second in the world for high standard of living, really have any problems to report?

There was definitely a fear that the service would barely be used. Only after launch would they see whether that fear was justified.

Why FixMyStreet?

Prior to this, Zürich didn’t have an online channel for infrastructure fault reporting: citizens had to use phone, email, or even fax if they wanted to tell the council about a problem in their community. So it was high time for modernisation. eZürich’s winning entry had mentioned the UK platform FixMyStreet, and so Zürich was well aware of mySociety’s custom software.

They assessed other systems. But a number of factors led to the decision to go with FixMyStreet, rather than either buying a different option, or building a system themselves.

Firstly, says Tobias, “It’s simple! And after the design revamp, it looks stunning.” And then, “mySociety was able to adapt the software to our specific needs, which is very customer-friendly.” And finally, “mySociety has a lot of experience in the field, which also persuaded senior council decision-makers.”

Adapting to Zürich’s needs

To complicate matters, each department had its own incident management system – and in fact they still do. In order to get the pilot scheme up and running, Züri wie neu has had to be a standalone system, although eventually the dots will be connected and a unified system will be introduced.

Anyone familiar with the original version of FixMyStreet will immediately notice one big difference with Züri wie neu – the maps. They’re satellite, unlike the Ordnance Survey maps that our UK users know and love.

“People are used to Google Maps,” says Tobias. “We have nice orthophotos [aerial photographs that are geometrically corrected to show uniform distances]. This way, people can view more details, like trees or landmarks, and therefore will hopefully be able to better locate their problem”.

There are less obvious differences, too. For example, users of the original UK FixMyStreet are required to confirm their reports by clicking on an email link. In Zürich, not so. In fact, all reports are verified on the council side: “We didn’t want to let any reports slip by!”  That’s admirable commitment.

Installation

With mySociety in one country, and our clients in another, there was always going to be a degree of collaboration from a distance. For mySociety, this isn’t so unusual: many of us work from home habitually, and we have all the tools in place for co-coding, shared documentation, and instant communication.

All the same, there were several additional keys to making sure the process went smoothly:

“A lot of email contact and feedback. Feedback from mySociety was really swift – way faster than what we’re used to from Swiss companies!”

And it was invaluable that there were two face to face meetings at crucial points in the development process. Here’s how it went, according to Tobias:

“First, a lot of talk with council members and other responsible people. Then, even more talks!”

“After that, we provided firm requirements for mySociety to implement. There was a lot of testing throughout. And we provided detailed feedback to mySociety about each implementation sprint.”

The process was not entirely without challenges: for example, we needed to build the accompanying app from scratch, which of course added to development time. And Tobias reckons that another face to face meeting would have been useful, especially as regards the app.

Launch

Züri wie neu attracted a real blaze of publicity – clearly, this was an idea whose time had come in Switzerland.

“The media went crazy. Every newspaper in Zürich reported the story. Even European television picked it up. Even now, a month after the launch, the media is still covering us”.

Results

Of course, the outcomes are the important part. We saw at the beginning that Zürich’s main aim was to increase transparency and modernise communication channels. We are sure that all councils are also keen to cut costs and increase efficiency.

In the first month after launch, there were 600-900 reports. Zürich’s population is approximately 400,000: comparable to Reading in the UK, and somewhere between Leicester and Bristol. Zürich’s report rate is way in excess of what we see in any of those cities – but it’s early days for this project, and we expect the number of reports to settle down somewhat as the launch publicity subsides.

It’s interesting to hear that Tobias and André reckon the users of the website are ‘new customers’ – people who never would have been in touch before. You can argue whether that creates extra work, or increases efficiency as more faults are reported that would never previously have been fixed.

Meanwhile, feedback from Zürich residents has been overwhelmingly positive. Zürich council themselves are pleased: their next step is to look into adapting the FixMyStreet system so that it can be used by internal departments too, and, significantly, they are in discussion with other councils across Switzerland.

The final analysis

Would André and Tobias recommend FixMyStreet to other councils, including those abroad?

“mySociety were great. They were always very kind, and they brought a large amount of input from their previous experience. We’d definitely recommend them.

“Working in different countries turned out not to be a problem – so long as someone in your organisation speaks English. But I would definitely say that meetings are vital.

“As an extra plus point, you also gain knowledge about English culture – comic shops, real ale, all that sort of thing!”

We’re not going to guarantee a crash course in comics and beer, but we can promise a street fault reporting system that will suit your needs. Get in touch to find out more.

Photo by Clemens v. Vogelsang (CC)

FixMyStreet.com has always tried to make it as simple as possible to report a street problem. When we built FixMyStreet for Councils, we wanted to simplify things for local authority employees too.

So, as well as offering the option to integrate with council back-end systems, we also put together this nifty dashboard (right – click to see full-size). It’s one of several extra features councils get when they purchase the FixMyStreet for Councils package.

What do councils need?

•  At-a-glance statistics, for all kinds of reporting. Perhaps the local newspaper have asked how many potholes have been fixed this year, or internal staff need a report on which types of problem are most rapidly fixed.

The top half of the dashboard allows for this sort of analysis. The drop-down category list means you can filter the view to show one category of problem – say, fly tipping – or all of them. Results are shown across a variety of timeframes.

FixMyStreet for Councils allows councils to designate their own progress statuses, beyond our standard ‘fixed’ and ‘open’.  So, in this case, the statuses include ‘in progress’, ‘planned’, ‘investigating’, etc. Each of these is shown separately.

• A realistic picture of how long it takes to deal with issues. The ‘average time to council marking as fixed’ is a great measure of just how much time it is taking to get reports resolved.

Perhaps just as important, though, is the ‘average time to first council state change’ – that could just mean the report has been acknowledged, or that its status has changed to ‘under investigation’ – but these are still valuable mileposts for keeping residents informed of progress.

• Quick access to problems, as they’re reported. At the foot of the dashboard, there are links to all problems reported within the council boundaries.

There’s an option to filter them by any of the statuses, as above.

• Access for multiple people, in different locations. The dashboard is web-based, so it can be accessed by any employee with internet access – or several at once.

• But at the same time, complete security. It’s password-protected, so it’s only accessible to those who have been granted access.

• A responsive provider. mySociety believe that the launch of new software is only the beginning of the story.

When people start using new products, they often do so in surprising ways. They often ask for features that would never have occurred to us, and indeed might never have previously occurred to them.

We will remain in active development, of the dashboard, and of FixMyStreet for Councils as a whole. We’ll be soliciting feedback, and listening to it very carefully.

The FixMyStreet for Councils dashboard is only available to councils as part of our FixMyStreet for Councils package – find out more here.

Had a public service? Do you care? Tell publicexperience.com!

Banish frustration and pointless griping about public services. We can all stop shouting at the radio. From today there’s an easy way to share the customer view of public services, and suggestions about how they might be better:

Publicexperience.com is a pilot project hosted by mySociety, conceived by some mySociety friends, funded by the Ministry of Justice, which seeks raw, unvarnished feedback from the point where the person in the street meets Whitehall. If there’s a gap between what that feels like and what it should feel like, just say “wouldn’t it be better if….”

It has the ear, to put it no strongly than that, of officials in Treasury and the Better Regulation Task Force. Their interest is in cutting pointless red tape and saving money (for which there is now, to put it mildly, some urgency).

Of course there are already any number of usual rowdy channels for political discourse, digs at opponents, foul language and rehearsing entrenched partisan views. That’s not what PublicExperience is about. PublicExperience is basic ethnography: the dispassionate raw description by the person who has just encountered the workings of the Whitehall tribe. It recognises no opponents. It’s merely futher evidence that raw, unvarnished and constructive feedback is coming.

It’s an idea originally kicked around five years ago under the name UKFeedback or “the Wibbipedia” on Idealgovernment and at the Young Foundation, and when PatientOpinion was starting to do it. Health is trickier. Patient Opinion was doing it very well, and it was emerging that people largely wanted to use it to say “thank you” to their care providers. Health feedback is still better directed to PatientOpinion. If you want your street fixed then FixmyStreet is smarter at directing the right issue to the right local authority. There’s a lovely Fixmysite idea from the Rewired State event for a neat way to report web site failings. Horses for courses.

But if you’re on the receiving end of the workings of Whitehall and you’re not apathetic, if you care about what happened and especially if you encountered pointless red tape or wasted time or money use Publicexperience.com. It could’t be easier. The right people will be listening. If we use it constructively, they’ll continue to listen. Share your experiences, and we’ll see where that takes us.

The Office of Public Sector Information (snappy name, lads) has launched a simple new service where you can publicly lodge a request for some public sector data that you can’t get, but need for some reason. They’ll then act as your behind-the-scenes champions and attempt to lever it out of which ever bit of government is trying to keep hold of it for no good reason.

You can also read other people’s requests, which hopefully will help people realize how much good data there is out there, and leave comments suggesting further reasons why it might be a good idea to let it loose.

Full disclosure, this was my idea, as part of the Power of Information review, so I’m not neutral in wanting to see people get what they want through it.

Go, post!

Warning, this is a personal view and I’m sure doesn’t reflect the views of the trustees or directors of yadayadayada. Actually, it probably does, but I’ve not checked because they’ve got grown up day jobs and stuff.

Today is the 31st January 2008. That means all around the UK millions of people will be trying to pay their tax – it’s the last day before you start having to pay the government interest.

Where do you go if you want to pay your tax then? How about the HM Revenue and Customs Website?

Brilliant, there it is. Right…. now, erm…. hang on. How do I actually pay my tax? There’s no obvious button! In fact, the link to help you pay is below the fold on my browser, is in about 3 point text, being link number 8 in one of no fewer than 5 lists of links on the homepage. Once you click through the experience becomes even more unforgivably awful. In fact, I can’t actually bring myself to write it up.

Hilariously, there IS a great big homepage link to apply for online tax returns “In time to do it”, even though it’s now too late to apply. Genius – why not warn your users with menaces only to show your own ineptitude in the process: that way they’ll love you more!

This sort of incompetence isn’t as high profile as the loss of those two famous CDs, but it drives people away from the more efficient online services towards more costly phone and paper based transactions, and inconveniences millions of people at the same time.

I’m concious I’ve probably just blown any chance of mySociety now ever doing any usability improvements for HMRC, but some things just have to be said. It’s a bit like the former NHS home page that had over 100 links, none of which was “I’m sick – what should I do?”, but at least they’ve improved that a bit…

Updated
The total cost of the HMRC IT systems of which this is part is apparently about £8bn over 10 years. That makes it about as expensive to run per year as Google’s general running costs (exc R&D) in 2006.