Stap isi

6 December 2008

Take my waste

When looking for local government service information, should you have to know what Local Government Area (LGA) you’re in?

Some information services would benefit from a standardised state-wide implementation.

Like information on waste collection.

What day is my next garbage pick-up? When is recycling collected? Can I put this pizza box in my paper and cardboard recycling? When is the next furniture and whitegoods clean up service? What can I do with this old CRT monitor?

To get answers, a resident or business must first know their LGA, then access that council’s website, then navigate information pathways that vary considerably from site to site. Having got to the relevant page, the user may yet have to deal with dense blocks of text and one or more PDFs.

Better if there was a single gateway – say www.waste.nsw.gov.au – that delivered this information based on a simple input, a street address.

Something like Fix My Street, where you input a postcode along with a problem report and the web service delivers it to the appropriate council.

In NSW we’d require a street name and number. Different waste zones can apply to opposite sides of the same street, for instance, and there are other complexities and irregularities.

But the Department of Local Government could drive participation by

• clearly specifying an open data format and delivery mechanism for councils that want to participate;
• building and promoting the gateway site; and
• providing councils with smart, interactive and customisable widgets to embed in their own sites.

The service could go beyond providing collection dates.

Type in something you want to get rid of and the service tells you if it can be recycled and where.

As the service knows your location and the current date and time, it could even provide you with directions to the nearest tip, or the date and place of the next e-waste collection point.

I think the delivery of ‘environmental education’ would be more effective this way.

— b3rn   maps, open data   Dec 6, 05:15 PM   #

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