Archive for the 'Street Cleansing' Category

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Pure Gold 999 – Confirm v9

Published on September 13, 2009 in Bridges & Structures, Central Government, Grounds, Highways, Local Government, Pavement Management, Property Maintenance, Refuse & Waste, Street Cleansing, Street Lighting, Street Works, Trees, Utility Organisation and v9.0 Roadmap. 0 Comments
Confirm v9 is being launched on October 5th 2009 with 9 webinars: Pure Gold!

Confirm v9 is being launched on October 5th 2009 with 9 webinars: Pure Gold!

They say that pure Gold is .999 and I have been looking at the first draft of the What’s new in Confirm v9 document.  It’s 20 pages with no pictures and screen-shots, reflecting the amount of development that has gone into the 2009 version.

Dividing the enhancements into categories is quite difficult – what categories should be used.  I have decided to focus on the business benefit that is accrued to our users and potential users.  The launch Webex seminars (which will be recorded, so don’t worry of you miss one, you can play it back on demand) will bring out the enhancements in the context of what Confirm can now do for your business.

The categories that seem to ring (another golden reference) true at the moment are:

1. User ideas that have been turned into Confirm enhancements

2. Ideas that have arisen when Users have tested preliminary versions of enhancements and our developers have followed the software into the field; a sort of “now I see the new functionality, it would also be an idea if it could also do x or y or z”.  I call these User Centred Design (UCD) ideas.

3. Technology updates (it now works with Oracle 11 or MapInfo v10 and so on).

4. New module (some of which also will include ideas in Category 2)

The v9 enhancements are spread across all 10 domains that Confirm covers: Highways/Roads; Structures/Bridges; Street Lighting; PMS; Street Works; Property Maintenance; Grounds; Trees; Street Cleaning and Refuse/Waste.

We recognise the “pure Gold” attitude of Confirm users who ultimately bring more efficient public services to citizens.  Citizens really want the “provision” part to be invisible, but so efficient that they never see it.  For example, Citizens want perfect roads, all of the time and no traffic jams; they want Parks to play in with perfect grass, beautiful flowers, clean seats, empty bins and safe play areas for the young citizens and no mowers in sight; they want the streets that they use to be clean, well light and safe without tripping over Mechanical Street Sweepers.

We will keep our focus in the days leading up to the launch, showing how your organisation will benefit in playing its part in the Value chain.

And this week’s picture?  Part of “pure gold” – .999 percent pure and as pure as possible.

Monitoring: sampling at feature level…at last!

Published on July 22, 2009 in Grounds, Local Government, Refuse & Waste and Street Cleansing. 0 Comments
Feature level sampling is here with version 9

Feature level sampling is here with version 9

I was delighted with a series of internal demonstrations yesterday.  One presented “Monitoring Sampling by Feature”. 

Have a look at the diagram: notice the drop down box with “Percentage of Features”.  In the past, of course, the sample was a percentage of Sites and all Features on each site were included in the Batch.  In addition, three extra filters appear on the revised screen – above the drop down box and to the left – there is a “Named Selection”, “Feature group” and “Feature like” filter. 

For Performance Monitoring users, this is brilliant.  Another great reason to get version 9 installed as soon as…

Local Government IT Excellence Awards 2009

Published on July 10, 2009 in Bridges & Structures, Grounds, Highways, Local Government, Pavement Management, Property Maintenance, Refuse & Waste, Street Cleansing, Street Lighting, Street Works and Trees. 0 Comments
Local Government IT excellence awards 2009

Local Government IT excellence awards 2009

Three organisations sponsor the Local Government IT Excellence awards – SOLACE, SOCITM and Intellect.  The awards are now open and I know of many Confirm users who have an excellent story to tell and thus a decent chance of winning.

Do you know about these awards?  Are you interested?

Follow the link to find out more: IT Excellence awards 2009

The awards should be submitted by Monday 10th August and questions can go to Carla Baker on 020 7331 2164 carla.baker@intellect.org

Confirm and the “Inspire Directive” from the EU

Published on June 22, 2009 in Central Government, Grounds, Highways, Local Government, Pavement Management, Refuse & Waste, Street Cleansing, Street Lighting, Street Works and Trees. 1 Comment Tags: .

Have you even heard of the “Inspire Directive”?  How, if at all, is it relevant to you?

I have been hearing about it for some while now and asked a colleague to explain what it is and why it might be of interest to Confirm users.

The Inspire Directive will help organisations share data about public assets

The Inspire Directive will help organisations share data about public assets

It is a European Directive that mandates how people share data, especially data about the Environment that will help where an emergency event happens that requires data to be pulled together at short notice to mount a co-ordinated public response – events like flooding, terrorist attacks, hurricanes and so on.

Confirm users are often the Custodians of such data and the Inspire Directive will either ask them to add fields to their data or ask their colleagues to create “standard data” about their data (aka meta-data).  Additionally, should the need arise, they will need to make their data shareable at short notice via one of the standard methods being mandated within the Directive.

So, this article is here to ask Confirm users: “what has happened within your organisation so far?”  Have you, for example, been asked to enhance your data by a certain date?  Have you been asked to attend meetings about Inspire?  Is there a need for us to discuss Inspire with our Customers now, in the immediate future or at a date set out on the Inspire website: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ 

Would you like to share your thoughts on the matter with me, so that we can align Confirm with your organisation’s Inspire compliance activities?  dominic.mcneillis@pb.com

I was asked: “…so, what exactly is Confirm?”

Published on June 5, 2009 in Bridges & Structures, Central Government, Grounds, Highways, Local Government, Pavement Management, Property Maintenance, Refuse & Waste, Street Cleansing, Street Lighting, Street Works, Trees and Utility Organisation. 0 Comments Tags: .

Recognise the question?  Ever wanted a little help explaining it?  This is one of the most frequent questions we are asked and I thought, as I am in the middle of preparing to meet our copywriters to get the next generation of Confirm flyers produced, I might share my source document with you.  Download, file it, even read it!  It may help you not have to re-invent the wheel next time there is a re-shuffle (timely today, politics fans) and the new boss taps the door and asks, ever so politely: “So, what exactly is Confirm – no more than  400 words, please?”  What is Confirm?

NB: you will see a professional verion of this appearing by the end of June in the Downloads section.

Bag It Bin It

Published on June 3, 2009 in Highways, Local Government, Refuse & Waste and Street Cleansing. 0 Comments

 

Litter, and the problems it causes on motorways and major A roads, is in the spotlight as the Highways Agency’s spring “Bag it! and Bin it!” campaign against roadside litter gets underway.

http://www.highways.gov.uk/news/pressrelease.aspx?pressreleaseid=164204

How is your council keeping on top it?

Transformational Government – three years on

Published on May 15, 2009 in Bridges & Structures, Central Government, Grounds, Highways, Local Government, Pavement Management, Property Maintenance, Refuse & Waste, Street Cleansing, Street Lighting, Street Works and Trees. 2 Comments
The latest report from the CIO is about Local and Central Government performance

The latest report from the CIO is about Local and Central Government performance

Three years on, progress has been made in the three major change areas set out in the Transformational Government strategy in 2005:

  • A focus on the citizen – not the supplier of public services
  • Joining up – to reduce wasteful duplication and enable personalisation
  • More professional project delivery

Read the report that was released on Thursday and form an opinion – then let us know.  http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/transformational_gov/annual_report2008.aspx

This is the third annual Transformational Government report, setting out the progress that has been made during 2008. It shows how the Cabinet Office has worked with government departments and the wider public sector across service boundaries to develop solutions, programmes and services that are both effective and efficient from the perspective of the customer, the taxpayer and staff.

Government is committed to a range of citizen-focused activities designed to optimise service design and delivery, and is proud that the United Kingdom is held up as providing some world-class examples of Transformational Government.

Is the focus on building citizen centric services?  Or, is delivering to performance indicators taking precedence?  Are we focusing on NI14? 

Contribute to the “post” by clicking the comments tag at the top of the article.

Let’s try a look into the near future

Published on May 10, 2009 in Bridges & Structures, Central Government, Grounds, Highways, Local Government, Property Maintenance, Refuse & Waste, Street Cleansing, Street Lighting, Street Works, Trees and Utility Organisation. 1 Comment Tags: .
The map is now embedded within the form. This new format will be rolled out starting Autumn 09.

The map is now embedded within the form. This new format will be rolled out starting Autumn 09.

Embedded maps are coming.  Starting with Street Works, we will be putting maps into some (not all) forms themselves – on the screen and on printed material.  This new development has been with the Software Engineering team who have come up with some really cool looking new screens.  You will see it in Autumn this year, but I thought I would air this to see what reaction we might get. Click the screenshot to see a large image.  Let us know your thoughts – clik on “Comments” above.

Photo support for Confirm mobile – any good?

Published on April 27, 2009 in Grounds, Highways, Local Government, Pavement Management, Refuse & Waste, Street Cleansing, Street Lighting and Utility Organisation. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
Well, would you?

Well, would you?

We launched Photo Support for Confirm mobile a few weeks back now and I am interested to know what experiences you might have had – good or bad.  I’d love to see some of the photos captured out on site with a few words describing exactly what was going on…with your permission, I could always publish a few amusing or remarkable ones…over to you.

Dominic