Innovate!

The South Dublin County Time Machine Launches

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:04:00 +0100

Last evening, as part of the innovation dublin festival, South Dublin Innovates in conjunction with the South Dublin Libraries launched the South Dublin County Time Machine (also known as the historical mapping project). Our previous blog entry refers.

You can now access this on-line project which uses the innovation of modern GIS technology with both out of copyright and licensed mapping, to allow the individual to trace back the history of the local area.

The Time Machine’s web address is http://gis.sdublincoco.ie/historical_mapping/

If this kind of stuff grabs your attention then you may also be interested in the Mannahatta Project which starts at a very similar point to the South Dublin Time Machine in merging the old and the new. Maps from yesteryear which showed Manhattan, New York from 1609 have been analysed along with the environs, habitats, flora and fauna, etc.. and merged with current day mapping and geo-spatial data, to produce fascinating vistas of Manhatten in the past, the present, and with some additional modelling, the future.

We came in contact with this project through the TED networks which enabled some of innovation weeks video content during the week’s activities. Below, from TED is Eric Sanderson who pictures New York - before the City.

This is a breathtaking project - another time machine as it were. In this case, a time machine which goes forward as well as back.

http://gis.sdublincoco.ie/historical_mapping/

www.southdublininnovates.com

Dragons spotted in South Dublin!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:45:00 +0100

As part of the Innovation Dublin week, South Dublin Innovates proudly presented a take on the popular Dragon’s Den TV series except this time the contestants were children from local schools who pitched ideas for the development of their local communities.

The ‘dragons’ for the day consisted of;

the Mayor of South Dublin County, Mick Duff,
SDCC County Manager, Joe Horan,
Nicola Mountford of the Synergy Centre, Institute of Technology Tallaght Dublin,
and Máiread NicGabhann, a past member of Comhairle na nÓg.

The location of the event or ‘den’ was the South Dublin County Council chamber and parents, teachers, and fellow students crammed into the available space to support their teams.

In keeping with the theme of innovation week the ideas which the children pitched needed to be new, realistic, financially viable, creative and most of all, innovative.

The event which had ideas being pitched from seven different teams was a huge success. Every one of the teams had brought in projects that were very informed and applicable to the current youth population of South Dublin. So what ideas did these budding social innovators and community entrepreneurs think would impress our dragons? The day produced such varied proposals as a new skate park in Tallaght, and a youth disco, and social facility in Whitechurch.

And the winner is…….

The winning group was the team representing Jobstown Community School, who proposed a skate park for their community. It was a well deserved win, as not only was their project highly researched knowing where they wanted it, about local CCTV, etc, but they had also drawn up plans and CGI of what the park would look like.

Borrow a Person / Not a book :: South Dublin County’s...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:53:00 +0100

Borrow a Person / Not a book :: South Dublin County’s Living Libraries

Our library people are very smart and like to think about their business differently. Yesterday, 15th of October, 2009, the first ever Irish “living library” took place in the County Library, Tallaght. For the evening the County Library issued ‘loans’ of people rather than books. Yes, those attending who picked up their living library borrower card were able to take out take out a real person and listen to what makes them tick.

The catalogue for the evening included;

a widow,
a blonde lady,
a person of the muslim faith,
a school-phobic,
a disabled person,
a gay man,
a single mother,
an ex-illiterate,
a black person,
an asylum-seeker,
an elderly person,
a traveller and
a recovering drug addict

This event was tremendously successful with more than 150 ‘borrowers’ attending. These borrowers spent a little time listening to the life story of the ‘living book’.

Georgina Byrne, County Librarian of the South Dublin County Libraries brought two of the ‘living books’, a gay man and a school-phobic boy into the RTE studios to chat with Ryan Tubridy on his radio show on Wednesday 14th of October.

The audio clip above is a pod-cast from RTE of the show.

Fields of Gold “Fields of Gold”, the South Dublin...

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:53:00 +0100

Fields of Gold

“Fields of Gold”, the South Dublin County Biofuel project based on a crop of “Oilseed Rape” was featured on RTE’s Morning Ireland programme on the morning of the 14th of October, 2009.

The project aims to educate the public about Oilseed Rape and renewable crops in general. The crop which is a demonstration crop was grown in a 15 acre field located off the outer ring road in South Dublin County. The site on which the demonstration crop was grown had previously developed a pattern of anti-social behaviour. Tracks were clearly visible on the former site from use of ‘scrambler’ and quad bikes. The new use of this site is pro social in nature and environmentally friendly.

The yield was expected at 8 - 9 tons of biofuel oil (8,000 - 9,000 l). The potential is within the demonstration project to run 10 family cars for a period of one year. The impact of the resulting crop is that the oil yield equated to 88,000 vehicle kilometres which in theory, will fuel 3 council vehicles for a period of one year.

This has been a tremendously innovative and interesting project for the Council to be involved with. In this audio clip you will hear from staff as to how the project has progressed. A supplementary presentation has been uploaded to our scribd account and is available below.

Fields of Gold Innovation Week 2009

After yesterdays blog about how South Dublin County Council use...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:46:00 +0100

After yesterdays blog about how South Dublin County Council use innovative technologies and techniques to assist the citizenry with issues and concerns - we thought that you might like to see and hear from our customer care team in action. With this in mind we have just uploaded a short video where you’ll hear some of our customer care team explain to the viewer how the customer care section works in South Dublin County Council.

Enjoy.

Connecting you to Customer Care

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:52:00 +0100

Innovative customer care is important in order to be able to deal with concerns and issues which South Dublin County’s citizenry have. For some time now, South Dublin County Council have been logging and tracking customer care issues throughout the organisation to ensure that they get dealt with in as orderly and effective a manner as is possible. Issues or concerns can be presented to our staff in a number of ways - by phone, by letter, in person, across the internet via email, or through an online logging facility on the council’s web site.

Logging your issue via the Council’s web site on-line form is the most effective way which you can note your issue or concern. It provides ample capacity to accept your details, provide a map reference to the geographic area where you are contacting us about (if relevant), and full details of your issue can be entered. The beauty of using this on-line form is that when submitted it is placed within the Council’s customer care system exactly as you have entered such that the staff which will actually deal with your issue will have your entire text as you have provided it. This helps enormously with bringing issues to the point of finality.

Once an issue is received and logged, an internal work flow process happens where your issue is transferred electronically via a computer system to the department that is responsible for the effected area. Within the responsible department, the issue is assigned to a staff member who is responsible for resolving the issue. The issue is then monitored and reported on to ensure it gets dealt with within designated target times as set out in our customer care plan.

However, it doesn’t stop there. You may not even be aware of it but our customer care team take an active role in ensuring your issue is resolved internally within the Council. These staff will follow up with our departments on your behalf to ensure that the issue gets handled with suitable priority and that you are kept informed where appropriate. Should an issue not be getting due attention for any reason these staff will champion your issue internally working behind the scenes on your behalf.

The technology which runs the entire customer care logging, tracking and work flow application has been designed and developed in house. Staff from our corporate services department / customer care unit have worked closely with our Information Systems staff / Development and Design unit to produce a bespoke application which is suited to the needs of serving the citizen in South Dublin County.

Open Source Hub

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:48:00 +0100

South Dublin County Council use fit for purpose best in class solutions to assist us discharge our services to the citizen of the county. No matter what project we embark on we will ask ourselves two questions; (a) is there an open source solution which could help us, and (b) is such a solution appropriate to the needs of the project. Beyond open source - the council also utilise free on-line services (again where appropriate) for media and content distribution.

We have successfully integrated the use of on-line services such as scribd (content presentation and distribution) and tubmlr (that which this humble blog is prepared on) to projects as profound as the innovation week or indeed the County Development Plan process. Our colleagues in the south dublin county library service are champions in this regard. They have blazed a trail with blogs and tweets way in advance of any corporate direction. As they put it themselves “At South Dublin County Libraries we like to think differently. That’s why we use Open Source software – which is free to use software developed by global on-line communities”.

During Innovation Week the County Library are taking the opportunity to showcase how open Source Technologies are used. The ‘Open Source Hub’ which runs throughout the week will let interested people sample how open source looks and works in practice. You can join in on the Digital Floor of the County Library in Tallaght, one of Ireland’s 21st century public libraries and check out Open Office, Mozilla Firefox and Drupal website builder!

During turbulent financial periods government and industry must ask themselves - why pay for software when best in class can be free to you?

Open source represents more than free software. There is community spirit which on the larger open source projects, is usually spread across the globe in a distributed coalition of interested individuals - some interested in using the product of the open source efforts, others interested in being to the fore in the development of such projects, others who are interested in helping others innovate and implement with the open source initiatives.

Be sure to drop in and see what you can do with open source. The open source hub runs at the County Library HQ in Tallaght during innovation week from 14th – 20th October, 2009.

South Dublin County's Time Machine Innovation

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:45:00 +0100

We blogged here recently about the innovations which South Dublin County Council are utilising to enable the citizen to partake in shaping South Dublin County online. Such innovations are great for shaping the future of our county but South Dublin County is full of history and heritage.

The guys in our county library local studies section together with the folk from our Information Systems Department spatial data team have produced a significant innovation to bring the citizen back in time - to be able to view how the county was in the past and trace how it has developed up to present day.

Using out of copyright and copyright licensed mapping you can trace back to the year 1760 (Rocque) and see what your locality or any locality within South Dublin County was like in cartography terms. Finding your desired location is easy - navigate or search the map for an address or a townland. There is a wealth of information available to discover in these maps. You can simply click between mapping from the years 1760, 1816, 1821, 1843, 1906, 1911-12, and 1942.

The service is presently in pre-release which means that it may change slightly over the coming week or so, but it is expected to launch online during Innovation Week (October 14th to 20th).

In the meantime as a reader of this blog you can preview the ‘time machine’ by following this link

Innovative Places :: RUA RED

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:42:00 +0100

RUA RED, South Dublin Arts Centre: celebrating innovation in the arts

Rua Red will be celebrating Innovation Week by showcasing our top creative websites and screening digital media films created by Irish artists. Tours of the building will be available on Friday 16th October and Saturday 17th October.

The digital media labs will be available to hire with a special 10% discount throughout the week. Visit www.ruared.ie or call 01 451 5860

Digital Treasure Hunt

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:59:00 +0100

Join in the Digital Treasure Hunt in Tallaght – an interactive quiz using your mobile phone and your wits. Solve the clues and visit areas of interest in Tallaght. – all within walking distance.

Follow the event on www.southdublininnovates.ie for information on the starting locations and details of how to get involved. Clues are delivered to your mobile phone by SMS or by a GPS application. Solve the clues and get the information on the next location. Successful contestants supply their contact details and are entered in a draw for an iPod.

Anyone can take part – all you need is a mobile phone and a capacity to solve clues This is a fun way to visit landmarks in the Tallaght area.

Now Here's a Simply Brilliant Idea

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:46:00 +0100

Eureka moments happen from time to time which change the way we live and interact. Simply Brilliant Ideas at the County Library, Tallaght on the 17th October looks at some brilliant ideas and how the have changed or are changing our world today. In five short focused presentations speakers from diverse backgrounds and experiences will share their ‘light bulb’ moments and will encourage the audience to think imaginatively and outside the box.

Simply Brilliant Ideas, 17th October at 12 noon County Library, Tallaght

Who will be speaking at the event?

Lars Jerkland from Google will talk about the latest buzzword in computing ‘Google Cloud’ – what is it how does it work and what does it mean for the future of computing?

Chris Burton from Vodaphone, who have over 315 million customers worldwide, will share his vision for where mobile phone technology will take us over the next few years. Vodaphone has just launched a social networking service called Vodafone People which will also form part of the new Vodafone 360 service. With this service they will integrate a host of social networking services so that users can see at a glance what their friends are doing without having to switch between different applications on the phone.

Nickey Brennan, President of the GAA will share the amazing of the development of a world class stadium in Croke Park from 1896 to today. Standing as an iconic landmark on the Dublin skyline this stadium of dreams holds the hopes and dreams of so many players and fans and draws millions of people to the theatre that it is each year. Hear how could grass roots organisation delivered one of the world’s greatest sporting venues to the capital city.

Preethi Nair, Asian Woman of the Year and Publicist of the Year always wanted to be an author. Having been rejected by a number of publishers she set up her own PR and publishing agency and under the alias Pru Menon managed to gain substantial press coverage and a three book deal with Harper Collins. Preethi will talk tell the story of duping the literary world and leading a double life to get her novel noticed. Fascinated? You should be.

Shaping your county online

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:54:00 +0100

Innovation so fresh you can almost smell the paint drying!

The Draft County Development Plan is a necessarily detailed vision of the county. Even with the best of efforts it can be a complex read and difficult to interpret exactly how places which you have an interest in are proposed to be shaped into the future.

South Dublin County Council are pleased to announce the availability of the South Dublin County Draft Development Plan on-line. On previous occasions the Council has had extensive volumes of information available including textual reports and maps. Interested parties could buy printed copies, download on-line documents, or visit the council office and libraries to review the detail of the proposed plan.

In addition to offering all of this, South Dublin County Council now provides an even easier way for interested parties to interpret what is being proposed in the Draft County Development Plan. Our on-line development plan viewer takes the information from many sources and presents it on a interactive map. You can zoom in and out, and pan the image to navigate to parts of the map or you can search for a street or house.

The information tool

When you have landed on a point that you want to find out more about in terms of what is proposed simply click the information tool and click the point on the map. The viewer then responds by giving you a pop up window with information from the draft development plan about that exact spot.

The amount of information which is displayed is determined by what you select under the development plan layers tool which ‘floats’ over the map. You can turn on or off as much information that you wish to see.

Registering your opinion

You can follow the link to register your details which will create a user account on the viewer. You can log in once your account is created and verified. Now you will have a new tool available to you to highlight a site or area on a map. Once highlighted, you can enter your submission text in the area provided and submit your observation.

Finally, once a valid submission has been made the development plan viewer system will email a copy of your submission to you including both text and map of the area with your site or area highlighted.

This innovative approach lets interested parties interrogate and comment on the draft county development plan, making it easier to access information which they have a particular interest in and more effective at ensuring the interested parties comments are received most appropriately with full mark up of the map detail. In technology terms it combines database technology, mapping technology, email technology across the medium of the internet to provide an end to end solution.

Your commute Via SMS

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:16:00 +0100

Did you know that you can accurately predict your commute in real time using a text service which South Dublin County Council provide?

Previously we blogged about the use which the traffic management section within South Dublin County Council make of real time traffic information from a network of cameras located throughout the county road network. In addition the traffic section use advanced automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) as vehicles travel along many of the county’s roads. Vehicle number plates once logged are fed into a database which gives accurate journey times. This information is used by our dedicated traffic management staff to make improvements in commuter journeys and assist the control systems to ease congestion on the road network.

The council has gone a stage further and now literally sitting at your breakfast table, you can text the traffic centre the name of a road and the direction you will be travelling. The Council’s traffic systems will respond by texting your mobile phone with a traffic update - journey times for segments of route along the requested road. This clever and innovative use of traffic information occurs in near real time (allowing for calculations to take place - matching of vehicle journey times, etc.). The results which get returned to you are accurate within a couple of minutes of the present traffic situation.

Why not give it a go?

For convenience, the number to text is a short code number - 51678. This is a standard rate text number so will cost no more than €0.15c from any operator (operator charges vary). For example if you propose to travel along the lucan bypass into the city, you would text N4 East to 51678.

Below is a complete list of the roads and the commands.

N4 Lucan Bypass

“N4 East” towards Dublin
or “N4 West” away from Dublin

N7 Naas Road

“N7 East” towards Dublin
or “N7 West” away from Dublin

N81 Tallaght Bypass

“N81 East” towards Dublin
or “N81 West” away from Dublin

Belgard Road (R113)

“BEL South” towards the N81
“BEL North” towards the N7

Fonthill Road (R113)

“FONT South” towards the N81
“FONT North” towards the N7

Outer Ring Road (R136)

“ORR South” towards the N81
“ORR North” towards the N4

Finally and perhaps most importantly - Never text or operate your mobile phone while driving. It is irresponsible, puts other road users lives at risk, and frankly is against the law.

Innovation in face recognition

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:13:00 +0100

Google have today released a new version of the free photo editing system picasa which has a couple of curious and innovative features. Of particular note is the ability to tag people in photographs. Tagging has become the norm for people across social networks, bulletin boards, and file sharing sites to loosely categorise their content. What Google have done is that they have introduced the same face detection technology which they have been providing with their web product into their desktop product picasa.

When you begin using this version of picasa, the system checks your photographs for faces and then as you click on images it shows you faces which it has detected i.e. people. You then type the person’s name and some other details and the image is thus tagged with the persons identity. It is really simple to do.

A little bit of magic then appears to work in the background. In your new ‘people list’ in picasa you may notice a ‘?’ icon. When you now click on the person it brings back the images which you have tagged as the person but also suggests other ‘finds’ that the computer has taken a guess at being the same person across your photographic library. This is very innovative and clever use of technology.

You can read more about it, over on the google blog or watch the introductory youtube video below.

Planning for you

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:14:36 +0100

Using innovation to enhance the local democracy of a county is a relatively simple concept. The planning permission process which is the responsibility of South Dublin County Council starts with the County Development Plan. This sets out a policy framework by which each subsequent planning application is considered. In times past the planning process may have seemed very distant to the citizen however today, through harnessing of the power of the Internet and technology, the citizen can get involved at many different levels.

So, how can you you - the citizen be involved?

To begin with, how can you find out what developments are being proposed?

The screen shown above is the “search and view” function of the Council’s planning web page. It can be found on the South Dublin County Council website. You can easily filter the data by date, area, keyword or specific register reference. At a glance you can see who the applicant is and where the application relates to. You can see if documents or maps are yet available. You can click on the reg ref (planning register reference) to see the full details and access any documents or maps attached to the planning file.

When you open any planning application, you can enter your email address in the box provided and our systems will notify you about any changes that are detected on this application.

As soon as it is marked up on the Council’s digital planning register there is available to you an option to map the application. When you click on this option a map is loaded in a separate window showing the application and an other applications around it. Each site is linked. When you click a site the system will then provide you with a link to the detail of the selected planning application. This is very useful for enquiring about the planning history of an area.

How about viewing the actual planning file?

Using the online service and innovations that are available to the user, each application is presented with any documents which have been lodged or submitted in an electronic format. The entire planning file is on-line. Should you decide to visit our offices, you will find the exact same documents - nothing more and nothing less.

The display tells you the description of the file, the type of file, and the size of the file. Earlier this year the Council began to use the latest in compression technology so that we can reproduce the colour the documents related to a planning application. This requires a browser plug in which is linked to the document type.

The downloaded file is an exact reproduction of what you would get on the planning file in the offices of South Dublin County Council.

There are lots more that you can do on-line at www.sdcc.ie. Why not stop by and spend a while. It might surprise you how easy it is to interact with your local authority.

Making the modern world

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:37:00 +0100

Making the modern world is a fascinating chronological insight into the people, the events, and stories of how we’ve arrived at what we know as our modern world. While the entire site is fascinating, why not check out the ‘icons of invention’. In here you can trace science, technology, and medical innovations. For example, long before the iPod, Apple’s first venture was into the personal computer market way back in the mid 1970’s - we’re not talking Macbooks but the Apple I computer (1976) - a personal computer based on a circuit board which you could plug in components and peripheral devices.

As a site chronicling innovation it is most definitely worth spending some of your time there.

Innovative Traffic Management

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:37:58 +0100

There are a group of dedicated staff within South Dublin County Council who enthuse about traffic. Yes - it may be the curse of some peoples existence however these staff work tirelessly and constantly strive to make improvements to the county’s road networks and consequential improvements in commuters quality of life.

The work of the traffic management centre is just one event which will run during innovation week (October 14th - 20th, 2009). At this event you will be able to visit the traffic management centre in South Dublin County Council and experience at first hand the innovations which our staff are using to make improvements in traffic congestion around the county. Booking for this event is essential. Further details can be found on www.southdublininnovates.ie or booked directly by following this link.

Apart from the internal working of the Traffic Management Centre, there are publically available online services which can be accessed which build on the work which takes place in the traffic management centre.

For example you can go to the traffic management section of the South Dublin County Councilwebsite and view traffic cameras which are used for operational purposes live on the web. The images which are displayed are streamed and are published in real time. The traffic management centre staff have access to more than 50 traffic monitoring cameras located at various locations throughout the county’s road network and a selection of these are permanently broadcasting to the Internet.

Across the computer network of South Dublin County Council,...

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:28:00 +0100

Across the computer network of South Dublin County Council, we’ve continued with our promotional activities by using this short annimated teaser to introduce inovation week. When our users log on to the Council’s intranet, this little animation plays - just enough to wet their appetite. Once the message is viewed the users don’t see it again.

Why not help innovation week by doing something similar at your place of work? Place your mouse over the video and click on the embed option. Copy the code and give it to your IT people to create a suitable page for this annimation.

7 Innovations

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:27:00 +0100

Today for a press gathering in respect of the forthcoming innovation week (October 14th to 20th, 2009), South Dublin County Council introduced “7 Online Innovations” - a presentation of but 7 of the innovations which are in use on a daily basis within South Dublin County Council.

The innovations are customer and citizen centric. The list isn’t intended to be exhaustive but to be a teaser as to how we as an organisation innovate and harness the power of other global innovations which are freely available to be utilised.

Navigate the presentation above or click the link below to browse on scribd.

7 Online Innovations - South Dublin County Council

Innovation Week Brochure

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:31:00 +0100

Just released is the innovation week brochure (October 14th to 20th, 2009). This is your guide to all the events throughout Dublin county by all partner organisations. Navigate it below or click the link to read it on scribd.

Innovation Dublin Brochure