When the coalition launched its Fine Gael and Labour Programme for Government 2011 earlier this year it made a clear promise to launch a crowsourced civic management website called fixmystreet.ie. Yesterday a similarly named site, fixyourstreet.ie was launched, but is this the same thing? Probably, but it’s complicated.
In the programme the government said, “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 site was first mentioned in Fine Gael’s manifesto, released before the election.
At the moment fixmystreet,ie resolves to a Register365 holding page as it has since it was registered by a Peter Cleary on November 25 2010. But far from being the national civic site as outlined out in the Programme for Government (although the site is still in beta) the recently launched fixyourstreet.ie has been registered by South Dublin County Council itself. According to the website ownership records the site was registered less than a month ago on July 7 2011 by Michelle Galvin, the Assistant Head of Information Systems at South Dublin County Council.
Yet, announcing the beta site, Phil Hogan T.D., Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government, said that this beta for the site will be rolled out nationally,
“The pilot of Fixyourstreet.ie will see South Dublin County Council deploy a publicly accessible web site with associated mobile technologies which will record non emergency issues such as graffiti, road defects, street lighting, illegal dumping and drainage.
It is envisaged that once the pilot is completed and evaluated, it will be rolled out on a national basis with any necessary adaptations.”
So, this begs a few questions, did Fine Gael not register fixmystreet.ie before it mentioned it in their manifesto (or if they did, why isn’t it being used)?
Why did Dublin South County Council, and not the government, resister the domain when it is planned to roll out nationally?
Either way, it’s all a bit messy.
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