LocalView is an online map-based service enabling people to search for and locate properties and other mapped land, people and property information in the Tunbridge Wells borough..
Sounded good, but in practice this is just one more of the same old same old's that local authorities have been deploying over the last 6 years and not a very good one at that.
I wonder how much of Tunbridge Wells' ratepayers money went to software vendors and consultant to build Local View? An informed guess, well over £20,000. Doesn't seem like great value for money in these hard pressed times.
If you think I am being unfair go and have a look at it here and then compare this with Hackney's latest effort Hackney Where which just seems much more informative, intuitive and attractive (not perfect but pretty neat).
Cost to Hackney? Probably a few days hacking time. Now at the moment the Hackney site might fall foul of derived data licensing conditions but hopefully as the details of Ordnance Survey's new business strategy and policies become clearer it will become easier for local authorities to use either Open Space or Google to present their data to the public. The big losers from such a change would be the software vendors and consultants who provide solutions like TurnbridgeWells' local view - you are going to have to step up your game guys.
3 comments:
Agreed!Just looking at the performance between the two shows the benefits of 'mash' verses ‘trad’.
I have to say though....that the Hackney offering, as good as it is, still has a few 'issues' i.e. try expanding the Wards button - all of the polygons are shown but none of the boxes are ticked, now un-tick the ward box and re-tick it and all the boxes next to all the wards become ticked....confusing?? But that is a minor point and a bit ‘picky’ I admit – well done Hackers LBC!
My biggest issue goes back to an age old problem with Local Government.....that they sit in splendid isolation. Take Hackney - no cross-border information...if you happen to live on the outer edges then the only facilities you will be shown are those in your borough, but there may well indeed be closer facilities of the kind you want right next door in another borough! Of course, you will already know this as you live there and probably use those facilities anyway.
So, the big question is...why isn't there a national portal where all this 'place' stuff can go - a citizen portal, if you like. If the cost of doing it is so small, then why can't central government: Defra, IDe&A or some such other department offer this technology? We will never have 'joined up' government if we continue to operate in splendid isolation! BTW look up the word isolation and you will phrases like: separate from other related factors; geographical remoteness; alone and physically separated from other people (sic) – doesn’t that say it all?
(ExLAGIP)
Some good thoughts there An which I largely agree with.
If all local authorities served their information as GeoRSS or something similar then it would be possible to build one hack that spanned borders. Would help if 400+ local govs could agree on consistent data themes and models but maybe that is a bit much to help for.
One step at a time
Are you related to Hier Onymous?
GeoRSS would be very nice indeed.
Then again perhaps even plain RSS would be a good start - according to mashthestate only 95 out of 434 UK local councils (21%) have RSS feeds.
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