Northern Grampians Shire Council in Victoria has been voted the overall best local authority when dealing with issues reported by the community.
The regional council – which represents a population of around 12,000 people – received the accolade from users of Snap Send Solve, an app that enables people to notify the authorities about abandoned trollies and illegally dumped rubbish and the like in their neighbourhood.
Also recognised, the City of Moreton Bay council in Queensland. “Being voted Queensland’s best by the community is incredibly rewarding. It’s fantastic to know our residents value the work we’re doing to resolve issues that matter most to them,” said Mayor Peter Flannery. “It shows that our communities appreciate the quick and efficient service we provide … and we’ll continue working hard to deliver for them.”
“This recognition is a proud moment for the City of Moreton Bay, and I thank our hard-working teams for their tireless efforts,” Flannery added.
Another Victorian local government – Ballarat City Council in the state’s west – picked up an award for best customer experience, which is presented to the authority rated as having excellent community communications.
As Snap Send Solve CEO and founder Danny Gorog explains to GN, the award winners are determined from user feedback analysed by his team. “We have a snapshot of the whole community and how the whole community thinks about interacting with the people who keep our shared spaces in good order,” he says.
Gorog tells GN up to 20% of reports and how they’re solved are rated by users of the app. “When we’re dealing with one-and-a-half million reports a year, that’s a lot of rating data,” he says. “It’s really obvious through our data to see who is really performing well. The awards are all about recognising those organisations that are doing that.”
The issues being reported by the app’s users are pretty consistent across the country, says Gorog. They include dumped rubbish, illegal parking, overgrown vegetation. “Graffiti is a big one. Dead animals on the road, potholes, trip hazards. It’s unbelievable the range of things that we see.”
One of the most-reported issues is the ubiquitous abandoned shopping trolley. They are, says Gorog, “a huge problem”. Around 120,000 trolley reports are received through the app every year.
Abandoned e-bikes are also a growing issue. “They end up in some weird and wacky spots,” he says.
Founded 15 years ago, the idea for Snap Send Solve emerged after Gorog took his young son to the playground one day and found there was a broken swing. Wanting to inform council, Gorog realised he had no idea who to report the matter to. “Even working out which council I was in was a problem,” he says. Gorog ran an app development business at the time. “So I took the problem back to my team and we came up with Snap Send Solve.”
In a nutshell, the platform simplifies issue reporting to government and other authorities. “We make it really easy for the community to report stuff. If you don’t make it easy for people to report stuff, they just won’t do it,” says Gorog.
While some councils have similar reporting platforms, Gorog tells GN people can only report issues under that particular authority’s control. Snap Send Solve is, he says, a one-stop shop. “We’re like Uber Eats.”
Users of the app – which is free – can take an image of an issue and report it in less than a minute. “In 20 or 30 seconds it’s done.” That information is then sent on to the relevant authority.
Acknowledging that local government is often criticised by the community for poor service delivery, Gorog says such criticism is unfair. “Councils can get a bad rap by the public, but I think Snap Send Solve is evidence that they are generally very responsive to their community needs and they are doing the stuff we pay our rates for – collecting the dumped rubbish, fixing the potholes and all that stuff.”
Indeed, almost 90% of all reports received through the app are solved, says Gorog. “That’s an incredible stat – and one that needs to be celebrated.”
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