Photo: Wikipedia/Namram
Mariestad is the 100th municipality that has chosen to join Infracontrol! Like most of the other municipalities that have joined, the town will be using the service to simplify and assure the quality of observations processing and fault reporting, and thus improve its services to residents. It’s above all simplicity and the combination of case handling for alarms and fault reports that lead more and more communities to choose Infracontrol Online; all in all there are now around 130 public operations connected to the service.
Annika Björklund, communications manager in Mariestad municipality, regards Infracontrol as the tool they’ve been lacking:
“We want to get better at taking care of residents’ observations and make sure that nothing falls through the cracks, and in a flexible way provide feedback to those who want it. By collecting everything in a single system, we gain an overview when it comes to observations and fault reports, and it’s easy to generate statistics for follow-up and operational planning.”
Everyday democracy through increased accessibility
Making it easier for residents and companies to provide information to their municipalities about things that aren’t working, enhances the ability to provide good service. Moreover, the quality of construction works delivered is assured, thus also that taxes are spent efficiently and effectively. Annika Björklund tells us that Mariestad will process observations and fault reports for all of the municipality’s departments with the aid of Infracontrol as part of its efforts to improve public dialogs:
“Acquiring a system for processing observations is part of the municipality’s efforts to make it easier for local residents and others to contact the municipality. We feel that improved observation processing through several convenient access channels, is quite simply a form of public dialog with our residents.”
Observations and fault reports in the technical administration constitute a large part of the number of cases in Swedish municipalities. This is where Infracontrol provides great benefit by helping residents participate in quality assurance efforts.
“Infracontrol Online allows anyone to provide information about shortcomings in the community’s infrastructure e.g. through the smartphone app we provide,” says Per Andersson, product manager at Infracontrol. All they need to do is take a photo, give the location of the fault and add a description. The system then sends the information to the person responsible for ensuring that the shortcoming actually gets rectified.”
A general platform for monitoring operations
Infracontrol Online went into operation in 2003 and has been running ever since. Mariestad became the 100th municipality to connect to the service if we add together the municipalities in Sweden, Norway and Portugal.
“We now have a total of 130 customers in national and local government who use our service and we foresee a continued steady increase moving forward,” says Johan Höglund, Infracontrol CEO. “The number of connected technical devices is currently around 2,000 and more are added all the time.”
One reason is the ability to connect the technical equipment used in society’s infrastructure.
“The technical systems come from many different suppliers and comprise different technologies in a variety of generations, functions and architectures. What’s more, installations have many different owners and users, and responsibility is distributed across many different operators such as upkeep personnel, contractors and control centers.”
Thus according to Johan Höglund, there is a great need for a universal, independent platform to which all kinds of technical system can be connected and in which every communication medium can be used.
Infracontrol Online benefits many small municipalities by providing full control and making everything from alarms, fault reporting to taking action simpler.
