merrion street

Mr Phil Hogan T.D., Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government today (2nd August, 2011) announced plans to begin a pilot website, www.fixyourstreet.ie which will assist residents in South Dublin County to report issues with local services and allow the Council to respond within two days. This initiative is in line with a commitment in the Programme for Government.

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.

Once established, the pilot will run for a period of three months whereby technologies will be tested in a live working local government environment. It is envisaged that reporting of issues will be accepted via the web site, through email, twitter, and coming shortly mobile phone apps for the most popular mobile platforms.

Key to the implementation of Fixyourstreet will be a commitment that ‘local officials will respond within two working days’. In this regard residents will be able to monitor the response and interact with their issue once it has been reported through the system.

Minister Hogan said; "It is envisaged that once the pilot is completed and evaluated, it will be rolled out on a national basis with any necessary adaptations. I see huge potential in this initiative to allow residents to bring matters to the attention of their council in a quick and easy way. It will also facilitate local authorities to deal with issues raised in an efficient and effective manner.’

South Dublin County Council currently operate an extensive customer care programme where they provide online customer care facilities, social media presence, and location based services to a quarter of a million people, 90,000 households and over 6,000 businesses. As part of the pilot phase South Dublin County Council will work with a number of other local authorities and with the support of the Local Government Management Agency.