York Council set to abandon “Smarter York” issue reporting system

Following technology problems, the York Council is planning to abandon its “Smarter York” mobile based issue reporting system.

Labour Councillors promoting the Smarter York “App” in London 3 years ago.

About 30 issues a month were being reported using the system.

However, for several months, computer faults prevented users viewing the progress made on the issues that they raised.

Now, lack of confidence in the system, has seen fewer than 1 report a week recently being posted with most seemingly being recorded by Council officials

The system has been heavily criticised over the last couple of years.

The alternative, internet based, “report it” on line system was also abandoned by the Council when it moved offices a couple of years ago

Now the Council is saying that it will discontinue the Smarter York service when a new “customer relationship management system” is introduced.

This is the system that should have been ready in May.

No explanation for the delayed introduction has been provided by the Council and no forecast of when residents will be able to use it has been provided.

We continue to find that proprietary systems like “Fix My Street” are much more user friendly than the alternatives authored by local authorities.

What’s on: Holiday Language courses from mid September

Je voudrais trois vin

Term starts mid September

If you’ve ever been abroad, you’ll remember the difficulty you can face when the locals don’t speak English. It can make even simple tasks difficult. What if you could learn the basics to get you by?

We offer basic language courses in French, Spanish,Italian and German.

You can learn how to introduce yourself, order from a cafe and find your way around town. A 10 week course could be all you need to take your next holiday to the next level.

Unfortunately, we can’t get rid of the check-in queues… Sorry.

You can find all of our language courses here, including intermediate and advanced.

2.6 million visits to York Council web site

The Councils web site had over 2.6 million visits during the last year.

The bounce rate (the proportion of visitors who read only one page before leaving) was around 50%.

Perhaps surprisingly the majority of visitors were using desktop PCs.

By way of comparison, a website like this one receives around 40,000 visits each year with a bounce rate of around 70%. Not surprisingly over 40% of our visitors are located in York. Most of our visitors are aged under 35 and are split almost equally between male and female.