26 September 2013

You're all pretty happy with TAMS it would seem

| Barcham
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At least 920 of you are satisfied with the ACT’s municipal services.

Shane Rattenbury has announced that TAMS randomly called 1000 Canberrans and discovered that 92% of them are satisfied with the ACT’s current state of municipal affairs.

“Canberrans rightly place much importance on municipal services such as their roads, paths, publictransport, parks and garbage collection,” Mr Rattenbury said. “This survey demonstrates that, while there is room for improvement in some areas, overall the community has a high level of satisfaction with our local services.

The independent survey, conducted by Micromex Research, measured satisfaction with 36 services and facilities across Canberra as well as the relative importance the community assigns to each.

“The five areas achieving the highest satisfaction were library services, recycling services at Mugga and Mitchell, bushfire hazard reduction activities, maintenance of grounds at cemeteries and the control of stray dogs.

“Those areas identified as being the highest priority were bushfire hazard reduction, construction and maintenance of roads, lighting in public places, recycling services at Mugga and Mitchell and protection of endangered species and ecosystems.”

Mr Rattenbury said that to address comments last year from the Auditor-General, the Government changed the rating scale used to assess accountability indicators reported through the annual report.

The ‘somewhat satisfied’ and ‘somewhat dissatisfied’ categories were replaced with ‘neither satisfied or dissatisfied’. This impacted on survey results with many people moving into the ‘neither’ category.

“Using this new rating scale the overall satisfaction with the public road network was 64%, with 20% neither satisfied or dissatisfied and 17% dissatisfied (figures were rounded to the closest whole number). This compares to 15% dissatisfaction in 2011-12.

“The overall satisfaction with the ACTION bus network was 56%, with 19% neither satisfied ordissatisfied and 21% dissatisfied. This compares to 22% dissatisfaction in 2011-12.

I would have found myself very dissatisfied if TAMS had called me out of the blue, but fortunately for them I was not one of their random 1000.

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Are we happy with TIM though? It’s half of the equation.

I’ve had two interactions with TAMS in the last couple of years. One (re fixing up the footpath outside my place) was fine, although it took six months to happen. The other, a query about low hanging cables along the back fence of my property, was awful. My question was handballed from person to person over a period of 2 days, and no-one knew the answer, but they kept suggesting that I should contact the company who owned the cables to find out what the legal position was. Right.

In the end, it was the tree surgeon’s representative who gave me the answer, which I subsequently confirmed by researching the legislation (which he accurately referred me to).

In case anyone wants to know, you are not obliged to prune back vegetation because it impinges on a privately owned cable. It only applies to electricity lines, which in my case are a good 2m above the thick, ugly black cable that runs along my back fence.

pink little birdie10:51 am 27 Sep 13

Roksteddy said :

wildturkeycanoe said :

Pity they didn’t call me, as I am most dissatisfied with all of my requests for service for roads and also footpaths.
Interesting that people are mostly satisfied with items that really don’t affect a substantial proportion of the 1000 random cindidates such as hazard reduction burns and maintenance of cemeteries, important as they are. Surely this skewed the figures.
Why aren’t the resuts, or in fact a list of the 36 services listed in the media bulletin, as the results can be manipulated to suit the government if the right questions are asked? For instance, did they include anything to do with ACTPLA, development applications and the like?
1000 out of a possible few thousand is not a great way to get an assumption about Canberrans in general.

ACTPLA isn’t part of TAMS

I want a new shared path because I am very lazy… Ginninderra drive should have a shared path on on the south side all the way along between Haydon and Aikman drives. It currently only goes from Haydon drive and the UC entrance

wildturkeycanoe said :

Pity they didn’t call me, as I am most dissatisfied with all of my requests for service for roads and also footpaths.
Interesting that people are mostly satisfied with items that really don’t affect a substantial proportion of the 1000 random cindidates such as hazard reduction burns and maintenance of cemeteries, important as they are. Surely this skewed the figures.
Why aren’t the resuts, or in fact a list of the 36 services listed in the media bulletin, as the results can be manipulated to suit the government if the right questions are asked? For instance, did they include anything to do with ACTPLA, development applications and the like?
1000 out of a possible few thousand is not a great way to get an assumption about Canberrans in general.

ACTPLA isn’t part of TAMS

TAMS went to the cemetery to ask 1000 people whether they were happy with the grounds maintenance. Only 8% expressed any dissatisfaction at all.

Always be suspicious of a Media Release reporting the results of a survey, without also releasing the full survey report. It is not easily findable on the TAMS website.

They need to be released simultaneously, or there is something being hidden.

IP

wildturkeycanoe said :

Pity they didn’t call me, as I am most dissatisfied with all of my requests for service for roads and also footpaths.
Interesting that people are mostly satisfied with items that really don’t affect a substantial proportion of the 1000 random cindidates such as hazard reduction burns and maintenance of cemeteries, important as they are. Surely this skewed the figures.
Why aren’t the resuts, or in fact a list of the 36 services listed in the media bulletin, as the results can be manipulated to suit the government if the right questions are asked? For instance, did they include anything to do with ACTPLA, development applications and the like?
1000 out of a possible few thousand is not a great way to get an assumption about Canberrans in general.

This!

You’re kidding right?

I would have given TAMS a big fat 0!
I seriously believe they’re one of the laziest, under-performing corners of the local government.

wildturkeycanoe7:14 am 27 Sep 13

Pity they didn’t call me, as I am most dissatisfied with all of my requests for service for roads and also footpaths.
Interesting that people are mostly satisfied with items that really don’t affect a substantial proportion of the 1000 random cindidates such as hazard reduction burns and maintenance of cemeteries, important as they are. Surely this skewed the figures.
Why aren’t the resuts, or in fact a list of the 36 services listed in the media bulletin, as the results can be manipulated to suit the government if the right questions are asked? For instance, did they include anything to do with ACTPLA, development applications and the like?
1000 out of a possible few thousand is not a great way to get an assumption about Canberrans in general.

More detail on the methodology please, TAMS! And the “random” sample – did you only call landlines? If so, how was that compensated for?

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