This case originated outside of a webform submission and does not have a summary
Request ID: FOI-2573-2021
Date published: 12 April 2021
You asked
This is a Freedom of Information Request. to BOTH Barnet Council and TFL. Each of you must respond separately to the different requests which are clearly noted below as being applicable to you.
The TFL Streetcare web facility at https://streetcare.tfl.gov.uk/ ("TFL Problem Tool") works well. It loads quickly, does not require users to waste time registering account, and it is possible to notify TFL of a problem in less than a minute. This is consistent with modern technology and public expectation for a website used regulars by many Londoners to help keep our city in good shape.
In contrast the Barnet Council 'Report A Problem' web tool ("Barnet Problem Tool") suffers from many drawbacks. It requires the unnecessary registration of personal user information prior to reporting a single piece of graffiti and is powered by outdated technology which takes a very long time to reload each page and several minutes to submit a single problem. Furthermore, it is impossible to see if a problem has already been reported by someone else, or whether it has been acknowledged by the Council and is planned to be fixed. There are other advantages that the TFL Problem Tool has over the Barnet Problem Tool which are too numerour to list here. There are many problems in the borough of Barnet and so there is a pressing need for people to be able to notify these to the council efficiently which is not possible with the current Barnet system.
It is therefore of public interest to understand why Barnet Council are unable to replicate the success of the TFL Problem Tool. What lessons can be learned and what is it about the TFL solution that needs to be replicated by Barnet Council?
It should be obvious that this request is being made to both organisations in this transparent manner so that information can be shared to benefit of Londoners, and for the purposes of working out how to save taxpayer money and at the same time deliver better public services. This is clearly in the public interest.
REQUESTS TO TFL:
1. Please summarise who created the TFL Problem Tool, when they did this, how much it cost (to the extent this is known or can be easily estimated, either financially, or by other metric such as developer hours). Please identify if the developer(s) were employed internally by TFL, by another public sector entity, by a private contractor, etc, and name them. Please identify if the same, or any other developer is entrusted with maintaining the TFL Problem Tool to keep it working well, and explain details of who does this (if different from the original creator of the tool).
2. If the TFL Problem Tool makes use of any standard or readily available platforms / tools / APIs which contribute to its efficiency and succesful implementation please identify what these are (so that Barnet might more rapidly work out how to implement improvements to its own system).
3. Please summarise the server arrangements for the TFL Problem Tool (since this appears to be well resourced).
(a) Is this run on a server, or multiple servers machines?
(b) Are these owned by TFL, a private company (if so state which), and is there involvement from a cloud service provider such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Provider, or other (and state which)
(c) Where are the servers located?
(d) Are there any Service Level Agreement / Key Performance Indicator provisions applicable to the performance of the TFL Problem Tool that mandate any particular response time (e.g. updating a page in less than 1 second during normal load, or ability to submit a form in less than 1 minute)?
4. Please provide contact details (name, role and email address) for a person responsible for maintaining or controlling the TFL Problem Tool who would be able to liaise with other public sector entities to share knowledge about the TFL Problem Tool to help improve public service provision in London.
REQUESTS TO BARNET COUNCIL:
1. Please summarise who created the Barnet Problem Tool, when they did this, how much it cost (to the extent this is known or can be easily estimated, either financially, or by other metric such as developer hours). Please identify if the developer(s) were employed internally by Barnet Council, by another public sector entity, by a private contractor, etc, and name them. If it was developed by Barnet council's outsourced function run by a subsidiary of Capita please state the name of the relevant company. Please identify if the same, or any other developer is entrusted with maintaining the Barnet Problem Tool to keep it working well, and explain details of who does this (if different from the original creator of the tool).
2. If the Barnet Problem Tool makes use of any standard or readily available platforms / tools / APIs as part of its implementation please identify what these are (so that it may be better understood how to implement improvements to the system).
3. Please summarise the server arrangements for the Barnet Problem Tool (since this appears to be inadequately resourced).
(a) Is this run on a server, or multiple servers machines?
(b) Are these owned by Barnet Council, a private company (if so state which), and is there involvement from a cloud service provider such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Provider, or other (and state which)?
(c) Where are they located?
(d) Are their any Service Level Agreement / Key Performance Indicator provisions applicable to the performance of the Barnet Problem Tool that mandate any particular response time (e.g. updating a page in less than 1 second during normal load, or ability to submit a form in less than 1 minute)?
4. Please provide contact details (name, role, email address) for a person responsible for maintaining or controlling the Barnet Problem Tool who would be able to liaise with other public sector entities to obtain knowledge about how to improve the Barnet Problem Tool to help improve public service provision in London.
In the event of any questions regarding this request please contact the requestor as soon as reasonably practicable and do not wait until the end of the statutory response period. Please give careful consideration to your responses and if you are unsure of your obligations seek legal advice.
We answered
TfL Ref 2573-2021
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 17 March 2021 asking for information about the TFL Streetcare web facility.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. You asked:
1. Please summarise who created the TFL Problem Tool, when they did this, how much it cost (to the extent this is known or can be easily estimated, either financially, or by other metric such as developer hours). Please identify if the developer(s) were employed internally by TFL, by another public sector entity, by a private contractor, etc, and name them. Please identify if the same, or any other developer is entrusted with maintaining the TFL Problem Tool to keep it working well, and explain details of who does this (if different from the original creator of the tool). The TfL Problem Tool is a managed service provided by Society Works, following a competitive tender process. The costs of the platform are available on the SocietyWorks website: https://www.societyworks.org. This service was launched in December 2019 and Society Works are responsible for maintaining the platform.
2. If the TFL Problem Tool makes use of any standard or readily available platforms / tools / APIs which contribute to its efficiency and successful implementation please identify what these are (so that Barnet might more rapidly work out how to implement improvements to its own system). FixMyStreet is a well-known, open source platform. Resources used: Debian servers, and they implement Open311 standards. Tools used: G Suite and Github and their own MapIt API. APIs provided by integration services they use. Bing maps, OS Maps, OSM geocoder are also used in addition to Perl and mapserver. Unicode standard for text interoperability and ISO8601 for datetime handling.
3. Please summarise the server arrangements for the TFL Problem Tool (since this appears to be well resourced).
(a) Is this run on a server, or multiple servers machines? It is run on multiple servers.
(b) Are these owned by TFL, a private company (if so state which), and is there involvement from a cloud service provider such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Provider, or other (and state which). We use a UK-based hosting company. However, some encrypted backups are stored in Amazon S3.
(c) Where are the servers located? Answered above.
(d) Are there any Service Level Agreement / Key Performance Indicator provisions applicable to the performance of the TFL Problem Tool that mandate any particular response time (e.g. updating a page in less than 1 second during normal load, or ability to submit a form in less than 1 minute)? Mutual SLAs.
4. Please provide contact details (name, role and email address) for a person responsible for maintaining or controlling the TFL Problem Tool who would be able to liaise with other public sector entities to share knowledge about the TFL Problem Tool to help improve public service provision in London. Fola Olafare, Customer Service Delivery Manager: FolaOlafarexxxxx
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If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for any reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.
Yours sincerely
Sara Thomas
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
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