My Council Services
Hello, I’d like to complain about...
Android App of the Week My Council Services is an interesting little app designed to let people conveniently report issues with public services or the immediate environment to their local council.
To use the service you have to register with your name, e-mail address and mobile phone number. In the UK, your details are held by public-sector IT company Abavus which provides the back-end for the app and no doubt sees it as an opportunity to drum up business.
There 30 issue options in all (left) and many have further options (right)
Once registered you can use the app to report a broad range of issues, problems or irritants which by default get sent to your local council’s e-mail address or as a direct data feed if it happens to be an Abavus client.
A quick call to my local council’s press office confirmed it is not, but that app-generated reports end up in the same place as those sent from it’s own website.
Offered subjects of complaint range from potholes and broken pavements to abandoned vehicles and fly-tipping. In short, the sort of things that irk us all but that we seldom get around to telling anyone about.
Every council in the UK is covered (left), with details (right)
The subsequent options to give more precise details of your complaint, including pictures and that all-important GPS fix vary depending on the nature of said grumble.
If the problem is a missed bin collection, you can specify if it was just you or the whole street that suffered, for instance. If you are complaining about a public right of way, you can choose from options concerning obstruction, harassment or threatening animals.
The various options are well thought out which makes the app quick and easy to use - and presumably keeps the system free from disjointed and random rants from Angry of Tunbridge Wells.
There's no option for the cow looked at me in an odd way...
I'm not sure that issues like benefit fraud or anti-social behaviour should be included because of possible malicious complaints, but at least the initiator can't hide behind a wall of anonymity.
Does my local council actually do anything with the information sent? I’ve no proof either way, but the same would be true if I took the time to call and tell them about a problem verbally. Using the app is certainly more convenient for me and I suspect for the council too. ®
Size 1.6MB
App2SD No
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COMMENTS
the clue is in...
...the .co.uk part of theregister.co.uk.
There is plenty content on here that's specific to .ozzies and .yanks, but you don't hear us complaining about it...
Re: Permissions
"- Take pictures and videos."
Presumably so you can provide evidence of the problem.
"- Mount and unmount filesystems."
Presumably so the stored images and videos won't take up application "data" internal memory and can be stored on SD card instead.
"- Record audio."
Perhaps so videos you record include audio?
I would hardly claim they're unnecessary permissions, at least for what the developer seems to want to do.
Council Action
I think most councils do act on fault reports from the public - although they do have people whose job it is to go out and check on stuff, they don't have many of them and there's a lot of roads and street lights and other bits of stuff for which they have responsibility so it may take some time before it's spotted by that means.
I've reported faulty street lights and pot holes, which all get fixed, often within a week or two (having seen ones I didn't report go unfixed for months, I think it's reasonable to assume I had some effect). Even when a set of busy traffic lights decided to do their own thing, a report resulted in normal behaviour being restored within a day and an acknowledgement that there was indeed a glitch.
Councils do have some level of maintenance budget and I suspect they like to use it to fix the things that people notice and complain about because it makes them look good for doing something they ought to be doing anyway.
Take note...
... of the app2sd function others have mentioned, when you get the chance. A lot of savvy Android users take note of this when looking at apps to download.
Other than nice interface, let's see if my council take notice of the reports.
"- Take pictures and videos."
I made no assumption, as neither the app description or screenshots gave any hint of this.
However, BerniS' comment above does mention submitting images - so okay :)
"- Mount and unmount filesystems."
No, the "modify/delete SD card contents" permission it also requires gives access to the SD card - this one shouldn't be necessary, I think it's only used for mounting the SD card as USB mass storage when connected to a PC - this along with the "mock location sources for testing" permission makes me suspect it's just been left in from testing.
When it comes to giving unknown software rights to functions on the computer that is generally within 5m of me 24/7, I'm a lot less presumptuous - but then I am a cranky old git ;)
