A citizen voice
Few citizens would dedicate the majority of their time to the maintenance of websites that keep their elected representatives in check. Meadhbh Monahan speaks to John Handelaar, creator of KildareStreet.com and FixMyStreet.ie, who does it for free.
Living with his wife in Cork, John Handelaar, who describes himself as a “[web] developer, troublemaker and broadcaster,” set up KildareStreet.com in April 2009. The impetus behind his decision was that the Oireachtas website at that time was, in his view, ineligible and cumbersome. “It just needed done,” he tells eolas. He was helped by fellow-journalist Gavin Sheridan from thestory.ie
Influenced by UK charity MySociety which builds websites that give the public simple, tangible ways to connect with and improve their society, Handelaar believes that citizens are not apathetic or indifferent to the policy issues. Instead, he believes that local authorities often create barriers to keep them from taking part in their communities.
Examples include the council (which he declines to name) that told him it didn’t have contact information on its website for reports of graffiti, litter etc. because it wouldn’t have a customer relationship management system in place for a “couple of years yet”. In addition, the fact that the Oireachtas Official Report is to be completed ‘within 24 hours’ as opposed to Hansard in Westminster which is completed and published online the following morning by 6am.
Fix my street
With plans to redesign the KildareStreet website (along the lines of its UK counterpart TheyWorkForYou on which it was originally based), Handelaar is also set to launch FixMyStreet.ie
This venture was originally mooted in the Fine Gael election manifesto and made its way into the Coalition Government’s Programme for Government, much to Handelaar’s delight. However, the Government planned to ask the Local Government Management Agency to implement the project, which Handelaar speculated would lead to its failure
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He subsequently kept an eye on proceedings and spotted that Fine Gael had let the domain name expire. He purchased the name and will soon go live with FixMyStreet.ie. Meanwhile, Galway County Council, Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council are currently using FixYourStreet.ie
“People should not have to know which council area they are physically standing in in order to report a pothole,” Handelaar says.
FixMyStreet’s first question won’t be ‘which council are you in?’ Rather, it will be ‘where are you?’ On the other hand, FixYourStreet currently works for three council areas and is on beta, i.e. “The functionality offered may change or develop further to meet the aspirations of the service delivery.”
Handelaar will email reports from FixMyStreet to the relevant councils. In the case of reports concerning Galway County, Dublin City and South Dublin, he will post the reports directly onto FixYourStreet.
Open data
The Oireachtas’ record of proceedings “is the largest open data project in any part of … government and they should get some points for that,” Handelaar concedes.
However he claims that, over the past year, the original source data from which the Oireachtas and KildareStreet generate their material are being published later and have more technical errors such as poor formatting and headings in the wrong place.
Outlining his process, Handelaar explains: “We use the same source material that they do to generate a different set of pages and turn it into a very detailed transcript.”
An Oireachtas spokesman insists that the errors are “simply a by-product of the software he uses.”
The main differences between KildareStreet and debates.oireachtas.ie are that, on KildareStreet, the background colour changes with each new speaker, each individual’s party, constituency and photo is shown each time they speak and links are available to each speech a politician makes (rather than just the page with all the speeches on that topic).
“You can comment on KildareStreet, which they are never going to do,” Handelaar points out. Users can receive email updates whenever a topic of interest to them is discussed and can view how often each TD or Senator has contributed to proceedings.
The Oireachtas is “presenting the information for the people who work in the Oireachtas” and KildareStreet is “producing that information for the public,” he contends. However, Handelaar “suspect[s] very strongly that they would bristle at that suggestion.”
The Oireachtas points out that it provides committee debates, whereas KildareStreet does not.
Handelaar points to Tuesday 5 June when there were 1,037 questions requiring written answers. “They didn’t upload the answers until Saturday morning, not, as you would expect in a civilised democracy, the next day,” he states.
The Oireachtas spokesman told eolas that the answers were incrementally updated between 6-9 June. He added: “It is definitely not accessible or searchable enough but we will correct that now.”
Handelaar continues: “The people in TheyWorkForYou are somewhat surprised if the Hansard for that day isn’t online by 9am the following morning. Ireland doesn’t even pretend to try to do it before midnight.”
The Houses of the Oireachtas Customer Service Action Plan states that the Oireachtas debates office must publish the Dáil and Seanad Official Report for the website incrementally throughout the sitting day and produce the complete record “within 24 hours”. Reports on committee meetings are to be published “generally within two-to-three working days or within a week at the latest.” No timeframe is stipulated for written answers. The office must collate and format written answers “as received from departments” for inclusion in the Official Report.
“There has been a major difference in the last year or so,” Handelaar states. “The lateness and missing data, sometimes for weeks, is a relatively new phenomenon. I don’t know whether it’s money-related but they are getting slower and more error-prone as time progresses.”
The spokesman responds: “The official record has not changed whatsoever in the last year. What has changed are the resources available to us, with an approximately 15 per cent reduction in staff but this has not impacted on the service we provide due to a re-designed workflow and greater productivity from what is a very able and committed team. All that has changed is that the sequencing of when the full record of Dáil written questions and subsequent answers is published and even that is by just one day.”
The Official Report is generated by an in-house team of parliamentary reporters, editors and administrative staff. “Significant investments” were made in digital sound and digital audio recording and voice recognition software in 2010 in order to develop in-house control of the production and printing of the Official Report “to reduce our dependence on a single external printer.”
Handelaar has received mixed feedback on his endeavours. He has noticed TDs reading print-outs of KildareStreet in the Dáil and has seen copies on RTÉ desks.
While KildareStreet and FixMyStreet are “two of four or five things we [he and his web designer wife] want to do,” he isn’t sure if he can continue unfunded. He has looked into forming a not-for-profit organisation that can accept donations. Until then, he will focus on launching FixMyStreet, redesigning KildareStreet and “teaching: not so much by lecturing, but by example.”
