July 8, 2010 by admin.

The Town of Bruderheim has a telephone answering service.  The answering service, accessible 24/7, is staffed by two involuntary volunteers and provides redirection to intended clients for the Town Office, cheerfully and always ready to serve.

The Bruderheim Town Office is aware of that going on, and has been aware for quite some time, but so far have offered no solution to what is truly an imposition on the involuntary volunteers saddled with the task of providing service to prospective Town Office clients who ask for all sort of things, such as whether we can provide “contact details for Bruce Trucking” or whether we “still operate the bulk-water-terminal.”

The more bizarre such information requests appear to be, the more likely it is that a given party making it is simply looking for the Bruderheim Town Office.

How can it possibly be that our telephone number became the tool whereby Town Office clients find their way to constructive and accurate information offered by office staff paid to provide it, whereas we, my wife and I, get paid sweet tweet, for being always cheerful and eager to provide friendly service to all sort of calls that number anywhere between one and up to five or more a day?  Our telephone number is not even remotely similar to the telephone number used by the Bruderheim Town Office (whose number is 780.796.3731).

For many years, the website of the Town of Bruderheim seriously ailed. It contained, for example, links that ostensibly were to lead to information on current town council members but led instead to a welcoming message by a now former mayor, even long after that mayor had become history for more than a year.  On the other hand, the promised information about the composition of the Bruderheim Town Council remained successfully hidden from all comers.

Still, anyone sufficiently astute in using Internet searches for specific websites and willing to spend the time required to find information on the Town Council’s composition could find it, but relatively few people are that astute.

The Town Office has been aware for years that the glaring deficiencies of its website existed.  Their solution was to hire someone to redesign their website, while the redesigning did nothing to address those deficiencies.

Even after the much-advertised redesigning of their website, the website still showed, for example, a member of the Town Council who years ago had left the Council because he had intended to move away, Marcel Mann.  That was until about half a year ago.

About half a year ago or earlier, the Town Office deigned to announce the launching of another revamping of their website.  They got everyone’s attention by removing all of their web pages and replacing them with a web page that states:

Town of Bruderheim

This site is down for maintenance. Please check back again soon.

That is were things remain as of now.  What you see there is all that remains of the consequences of the last major redesign of the website of the Town of Bruderheim. Of course, the creation of absence of useful information is an unsatisfactory problem solution.  As you can see from the full text of that web page, the information provided there is useless for anyone trying to glean something as simple as instructions on how the Bruderheim Town Office can be contacted either by e-mail, snail-mail or telephone.

The reason why we have been forced into providing answering services for the Town Office is that prospective clients keep on searching for better information than that offered by the Bruderheim Town Office.  All who succeed in that effort are then rewarded by reaching the best possible alternative, the website of About Bruderheim, where they can obtain our telephone number, call us and get helpful advice, such as to call 780.796.3731 during standard government-bureaucracy operating hours from 9 a.m to 4 p.m.

When we paid our increased property taxes last June, we suggested to the Town Office staff that it would be a practical solution to add contact information to their cryptic message at their website, but other than that they verified that such information was absent from their website and that they told us that we would probably be very interested in “the roll-out of the newly redesigned Town Office website at their next Town Council meeting,” absolutely nothing was done to improve the quality of the service they provide to their clients.  They persist in hiding their identity and location, even though the required update of their website would not require more than a few seconds of work.

Sorry people, but that is not good enough, not for as long as Town Office staff feel that a “roll-out” is as or more important than a practical and useful update of the Town Office website and to put it online for all to see and use.  The general public and your constituents expect nothing less!

Posted in Town of Bruderheim, Taxes, Organizational News, Community & Industry | Print | 2 Comments »

July 23, 2009 by admin.

Although the blog was not out of commission, it was not possible to make updates for the last week or so.

For about a week now, the online access for folc.ca was out of commission.

The modem quit working but is now back in operation.  Shaw Cable, the high-speed service provider saw fit to send a new modem through the mail service.  That took a week, even though it would probably have been faster to give one of their service technician a new modem to drop off at our address — given that a technician is in our town virtually every day.

Anyway, that is now water under the bridge and no more than to be expected from a monopoly.

All that remains to be done now is to catch up on software updates.  After that there will be the regular updates (now a bit less frequently than before my heart attack in February).

Sorry for the delay, but things will be somewhat more normal from now on.

–Walter

Posted in Organizational News | Print | No Comments »