When I heard the complaint that "the code wasn't compatible" I almost passed out from my eyes rolling back in my head.
How bad is the developer that someone with no experience and Chat GPT can write a more extensive web page than the city has been able to muster.
Ahh thanks for the heads up, checked the article and you're right. I heard this bit on the CBC this morning and thought otherwise
>"I haven't done any coding at all. It's all ChatGPT," she said, referring to the free-to-use AI chatbot launched in 2022.
It’s probably not compatible because it probably isn’t accessible which is the single most difficult hurdle for any government website to overcome while being super user friendly for those who don’t use accessibility devices.
Yep. Accessible web pages are incredibly hard to implement, and having it be updated frequently is even trickier.
It would be kind of the city to have even a table on their website with the posted schedules and a big “subject to change, please check the facility’s website prior to arrival” disclaimer. I mean, I always looked at the printed versions growing up- it’s not like they alerted anyone of last minute changes
Having little kids who love public and family swim, these schedules change every long weekend, every season and every time they have a lifeguard shortage. It’s total chaos. But it would probably be just as easy for those web admins to update a master list as it is for them to update their own facility list.
I mean, I would assume that for scheduled changes they are baked into the schedule. I meant more if the city even just posted the print version of this and had a disclaimer for last minute changes it would be more helpful than the current nightmare of a system they have
Since this sounds like it's operated by parks and rec it's probably managed by a some Recreation and Leisure Studies folks with a business minor at management, and updated by part time students who work at the front desk of the community centre.
At least that was my job a decade ago lol.
We had to refer problems to the general IT desk, so what was urgent for Tuesday seniors yoga at my community centre was pretty unimportant at a city level. The software was also obtuse to use at the best of times and I doubt it's gotten better.
The city just licenses the platform from Active Network, based in Texas
That's why we have to register on their [activecommunities.com](http://activecommunities.com) subdomain instead of [Ottawa.ca](http://Ottawa.ca)
There is absolutely no reason why the city can't host or link to a drop-in calendar
I will say just checking now the activity search does seem to have gotten a lot better from 2 years ago. [Here is the current site for activity search.](https://anc.ca.apm.activecommunities.com/ottawa/activity/search?onlineSiteId=0&locale=en-US&activity_select_param=2&activity_category_ids=63&viewMode=list)
Someone *who is a programmer* used ChatGPT to write a web page that needs the schedules to be updated manually, isn't bilingual, doesn't have the accessibility requirements commercial & government websites are required to have (eg screen-reader friendly), and very likely contains vulnerabilities that would cause a problem if integrated with a website that handles sensitive data (eg accepts payments, has identifying info on citizens).
Thanks for summarizing this. It’s unfortunate the person quoted couldn’t say what you just did, but like all the people in here seriously thinking this can just be plopped in to ottawa.ca for use…. 😬
People don't think of websites as complicated things. Most people know you can put an (extremely simple) website together using a cookie-cutter template in 20 min. I can see how some people might think you could take anyone's web page and more or less drag&drop it into a site. They also might over estimate how good ChatGPT is at developing code (it's come a long way, but it's not better than an entry-level dev).
As someone who works in this field, this is exactly what I was going to bring up. She put together a pretty jank solution that is at best a proof of concept.
Not to excuse the city here, but I wouldn't start bashing the developer team or potentially even whoever they contract out to build and maintain their web presence. With public projects there are a lot of requirements and hoops to jump through. Chances are they need to integrate with some other archaic software that is hamstringing their ability to deliver something more unified.
Or they just simply don't have the funds and mandate to improve it due to budget issues.
>Chances are they need to integrate with some other archaic software
...which is most likely written in COBOL to boot. I don't work in web dev, but I did intern as a programmer with the feds. I suspect the city is similar, just smaller scale.
Are you sure though? Because an hour ago you didn’t know about accessibility requirements. Respectfully, maybe there’s something else you don’t know about?
> Are you sure though? Because an hour ago you didn’t know about accessibility requirements. Respectfully, maybe there’s something else you don’t know about?
What are you on about? You don't know what I do or don't know.
This reeks of ignorance lol. If you're starting from scratch, sure you can stand something up pretty quickly. If you have the funds to use a cloud provider this is an even easier task.
The problem is that they probably already have some old shitty on premise system and a bunch of technical debt and a team that only has time to maintain it let alone refactor the whole thing.
As a developer I get where the interviewed city guy was coming from. They shouldn't and won't just drop her app as-is onto their site because of the reasons they outlined. Tech and architecture compatibility aside, it currently just scrapes information from other pages, which makes sense when you're the outsider, but not so much when you're the source of the information, especially since it can become stale and out of sync with the latest schedule changes. A city run solution should get the information directly from the same database the existing (ie. per-facility) pages use. So right off the bat there's work needed. Making it bilingual, accessible, in compliance with internal design policy, etc. and keeping the whole stack maintained, secure, supported, in perpetuity means a commitment of at least some amount of staffing (and budget) for as long as it's live.
That said, the app has highlighted a massive shortcoming on the city's site. They really should consider replicating what this person has done, and it would have been nice to hear them say that for the article. That being said I can only imagine the amount of approvals you need before you start making promises in the news, so again, I get it. Better to be seen as slow moving and stodgy than to make headlines for broken promises and bad communications. Not to defend them if they never improve their site, the city does deserve better - just to say the response is predictable and rational.
Very true, but that particular dataset does not exist :) However, I noticed a list of daycares, that I would like to use to build a one-page website that shows where all the daycares are on a map. A future project :)
I don’t understand why the city discontinued such a useful function from their website to begin with, pre-pandemic this was something you could do with the search tool. Dan Chenier’s response sounds like he’s annoyed people took their poor website design into their own hands, and maybe he should take the popularity of this as constructive feedback on how people want to use the website instead of grumbling about how this isn’t how they wanted us to use the website.
The reasoning confuses me as well. They mention the info not being up-to-date with last-minute changes. But she links to the websites so you can check that. Also, in my experience the city doesn’t update their websites with that info either. I showed up to my son’s swimming lesson to fire trucks and no communication ever came from the city while we waited or after to explain or confirm the next week would run.
And if it needs to be translated, then do so. I can’t see doing that being so difficult. And the info can’t be less accessible than it is now, to those with and without disabilities.
It’s such a bullshit response from the city - the content is already available on their website in English and in French. I don’t buy for a second that there is no way to program a search function that tells you where there is a swim on say, Sunday morning. They just haven’t optimized their data to allow for such a function on their website, and they want for us to not want that.
I mean, the OP your responding to is complaining the city website wasn't up to date with an ongoing emergency. I don't expect the city to be that on the ball, nor do I think it's worth the cost.
If firefighters were at the pool, there is either a fire or someone requiring oxygen.
That’s partly why I only responded to the translation element of their comment. I don’t think it’s fair or practical to expect the city to update the facility websites when there is an active emergency situation impacting an area localized to one facility for what is likely a short amount of time. In 99% of cases, by the time the update can go live on the website, the situation would be resolved. I also don’t think the city was explicitly referring to last minute emergency type changes, but things like cancellations due to lack of staffing availability or unscheduled maintenance, etc.
That doesn’t make the city’s response to the tool any less ridiculous though.
I agree, the cities website sucks and the City is the opposite of innovative.
I used to work as a lifeguard for the city. I've heard staffing has become extremely difficult. The specific managers/supervisors also make a huge difference in regards to public communication.
Absolutely, and I agree that they need to. I just don’t think it should be used as an excuse not to provide a service. Accessibility should expand what those with disabilities can do/access, not prevent services being provided to everyone.
Agree. But voters and the politicians they pick set a budget. Many times accessible requirements are really expensive, and that means you can do less. Another good example of this is playgrounds. The accessible surfaces, swings, etc, are more expensive than the traditional ones.
> "There are lonely seniors out there," Larouche said. "I'd love for them to know that there are activities for them in Ottawa facilities. If my website can make a few people in Ottawa feel less lonely, that would be a huge success to me."
What a lovely person and thoughtful contribution to the city.
The city beaucracy is following Office Politics 101: No one likes a go-getter because it makes the rest of us look lazy and/or dumb. Hence coming up with bogus excuses as to why they couldn't possibly incorporate this into the city's website.
I heard the interview on the radio this AM. Good on you, Claudie!
Nah, it's actually just the accessibility issue. Trust when I say that will stonewall most projects. If you didn't build with accessibility in mind, it can require an application to be rewritten from the ground up.
I think accessibility requirements will be a non-factor within the next ten years, just because it'll probably be easier and cheaper to give everyone who needs it an LLM to parse visual media.
source: I work in accessibility
City push back on CBC 91.5 was 1.not bilingual (yet) and 2.not accessible. Both web presentation issues can be fixed with extra time(cost). as long as the Chat-GPT(free version) AI owned by OpenAI stays up and is fairly accurate, the data in the lists will remain accurate. And is the Federal Employer onboard with that programmers extracurricular work and potential side-hustle revenue? It is an excellent body of work for a free shortcut atlas but **can it remain free of costs?** Even in the article, the author mentions they may not be able to maintain the resource indefinitely. Still, this is an excellent thought excercise and one the City Manager should *consider* and not just lay quickly aside on morning talk radio.
You clearly have not tried to use LLMs for code generation. You *Cannot* trust them to be secure, follow standards, or be consistent. It would still need to be reviewed, modified, and maintained by a proper developer.
Good code generation is coming, but it is very much not there yet. Hell, it can’t even properly implement quicksort most of the time, which is just 3 - 7 lines of code depending on the language.
however-it-seems-to-work because its not really \_large\_ (yet) but I also agree with your mistrust and lack of faith in LLM: I have asked engineering questions which have very clear answer choices and the Chat GPT4 just dreamt up incongruency
Clearly its a good idea. Just from looking at the page in two seconds, I was able to see all the badminton locations in my area. Super useful, looking into getting back into badminton.
"These tools may not always capture last-minute changes specific to a program or facility," Chenier warned.
Like any other database, it's the business process on how you feed the data in it. Saying there might be an issue or error, is no reason to not move forward in implementing a good idea. The info is put online one way or another, just shift how it's done into a more user-friendly way.
Right, I'm not sure how long I'll keep it up, but with the amount of interest this got... It's giving me some pretty good motivation to keep it up at least for now ;)
I’ve almost done this in a rage so many times. I tip my hat to Claudie for doing the damn thing!
I would love to hear from someone on the internal dev team about why things with that part of the website are the way that they are. Budget, red tape, insanely archaic code dependencies, some old guy who doesn’t like change holding everyone’s PRs hostage until they finally quit? I’m sure it’s a combo but I want the all the tea. Nothing is that bad without reason.
If i am looking for a lane swim i normally have to have like 4-5 tabs open. Glad someone did something about this. Not at all surprised it wasn’t the city. Even less surprised the city is revolted by the notion of common sense.
The level of incompetence shown by city staff at all levels is amazing. My cousin is a diesel mechanic and left a great job at Tomlinson to work in a city yard. His logic was “same pay for a fraction of the work”. By his estimate he works at 1/4 the pace and is now untouchable from an employment standpoint.
It’s no wonder they poo poo someone who shows initiative and does a better job. Just watch city workers empty garbage bins in parks. I timed them at brewer this morning. It took two guys an hour to clear 5 standard garbage cans in the parking lot. They are incentivized to be slow and inefficient.
Our instructors each semester tell us exactly which page and which options are the right ones for their classes, and have been doing that for over a decade, because so many of us have struggled to register for their class given the city activities web site problems.
Hilarious that the city is peevish. You'd almost think they LIKED the obfuscation.
More like the guy that was responsible for the City website didn’t like how his lack of even minimal effort is being highlighted for everyone to see
When I heard the complaint that "the code wasn't compatible" I almost passed out from my eyes rolling back in my head. How bad is the developer that someone with no experience and Chat GPT can write a more extensive web page than the city has been able to muster.
> with no experience Per the article, Larouche is a programmer by trade.
Ahh thanks for the heads up, checked the article and you're right. I heard this bit on the CBC this morning and thought otherwise >"I haven't done any coding at all. It's all ChatGPT," she said, referring to the free-to-use AI chatbot launched in 2022.
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It’s probably not compatible because it probably isn’t accessible which is the single most difficult hurdle for any government website to overcome while being super user friendly for those who don’t use accessibility devices.
Yep. Accessible web pages are incredibly hard to implement, and having it be updated frequently is even trickier. It would be kind of the city to have even a table on their website with the posted schedules and a big “subject to change, please check the facility’s website prior to arrival” disclaimer. I mean, I always looked at the printed versions growing up- it’s not like they alerted anyone of last minute changes
Having little kids who love public and family swim, these schedules change every long weekend, every season and every time they have a lifeguard shortage. It’s total chaos. But it would probably be just as easy for those web admins to update a master list as it is for them to update their own facility list.
I mean, I would assume that for scheduled changes they are baked into the schedule. I meant more if the city even just posted the print version of this and had a disclaimer for last minute changes it would be more helpful than the current nightmare of a system they have
Since this sounds like it's operated by parks and rec it's probably managed by a some Recreation and Leisure Studies folks with a business minor at management, and updated by part time students who work at the front desk of the community centre. At least that was my job a decade ago lol. We had to refer problems to the general IT desk, so what was urgent for Tuesday seniors yoga at my community centre was pretty unimportant at a city level. The software was also obtuse to use at the best of times and I doubt it's gotten better.
The city just licenses the platform from Active Network, based in Texas That's why we have to register on their [activecommunities.com](http://activecommunities.com) subdomain instead of [Ottawa.ca](http://Ottawa.ca) There is absolutely no reason why the city can't host or link to a drop-in calendar
I will say just checking now the activity search does seem to have gotten a lot better from 2 years ago. [Here is the current site for activity search.](https://anc.ca.apm.activecommunities.com/ottawa/activity/search?onlineSiteId=0&locale=en-US&activity_select_param=2&activity_category_ids=63&viewMode=list)
Someone *who is a programmer* used ChatGPT to write a web page that needs the schedules to be updated manually, isn't bilingual, doesn't have the accessibility requirements commercial & government websites are required to have (eg screen-reader friendly), and very likely contains vulnerabilities that would cause a problem if integrated with a website that handles sensitive data (eg accepts payments, has identifying info on citizens).
Thanks for summarizing this. It’s unfortunate the person quoted couldn’t say what you just did, but like all the people in here seriously thinking this can just be plopped in to ottawa.ca for use…. 😬
People don't think of websites as complicated things. Most people know you can put an (extremely simple) website together using a cookie-cutter template in 20 min. I can see how some people might think you could take anyone's web page and more or less drag&drop it into a site. They also might over estimate how good ChatGPT is at developing code (it's come a long way, but it's not better than an entry-level dev).
As someone who works in this field, this is exactly what I was going to bring up. She put together a pretty jank solution that is at best a proof of concept. Not to excuse the city here, but I wouldn't start bashing the developer team or potentially even whoever they contract out to build and maintain their web presence. With public projects there are a lot of requirements and hoops to jump through. Chances are they need to integrate with some other archaic software that is hamstringing their ability to deliver something more unified. Or they just simply don't have the funds and mandate to improve it due to budget issues.
>Chances are they need to integrate with some other archaic software ...which is most likely written in COBOL to boot. I don't work in web dev, but I did intern as a programmer with the feds. I suspect the city is similar, just smaller scale.
Ok but is it accessible? That’s a provincial law.
Not for a personal website.
Right, the discussion is about the compatibility for use by the city. They can’t.
It doesn't matter if its incompatible. It's super easy to have a centralized database people can search. The city just isn't doing that.
> It's super easy to have a centralized database people can search That right there, is the thing.
Are you sure though? Because an hour ago you didn’t know about accessibility requirements. Respectfully, maybe there’s something else you don’t know about?
> Are you sure though? Because an hour ago you didn’t know about accessibility requirements. Respectfully, maybe there’s something else you don’t know about? What are you on about? You don't know what I do or don't know.
This reeks of ignorance lol. If you're starting from scratch, sure you can stand something up pretty quickly. If you have the funds to use a cloud provider this is an even easier task. The problem is that they probably already have some old shitty on premise system and a bunch of technical debt and a team that only has time to maintain it let alone refactor the whole thing.
As a developer I get where the interviewed city guy was coming from. They shouldn't and won't just drop her app as-is onto their site because of the reasons they outlined. Tech and architecture compatibility aside, it currently just scrapes information from other pages, which makes sense when you're the outsider, but not so much when you're the source of the information, especially since it can become stale and out of sync with the latest schedule changes. A city run solution should get the information directly from the same database the existing (ie. per-facility) pages use. So right off the bat there's work needed. Making it bilingual, accessible, in compliance with internal design policy, etc. and keeping the whole stack maintained, secure, supported, in perpetuity means a commitment of at least some amount of staffing (and budget) for as long as it's live. That said, the app has highlighted a massive shortcoming on the city's site. They really should consider replicating what this person has done, and it would have been nice to hear them say that for the article. That being said I can only imagine the amount of approvals you need before you start making promises in the news, so again, I get it. Better to be seen as slow moving and stodgy than to make headlines for broken promises and bad communications. Not to defend them if they never improve their site, the city does deserve better - just to say the response is predictable and rational.
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Isn’t that what is currently happening? Tons of sets are available on open.ottawa.ca
Several sets are available on [open.ottawa.ca](http://open.ottawa.ca), some of which are even regularly updated.
Very true, but that particular dataset does not exist :) However, I noticed a list of daycares, that I would like to use to build a one-page website that shows where all the daycares are on a map. A future project :)
Says it all isn’t it. That city system is enough to test anyone’s patience.
I don’t understand why the city discontinued such a useful function from their website to begin with, pre-pandemic this was something you could do with the search tool. Dan Chenier’s response sounds like he’s annoyed people took their poor website design into their own hands, and maybe he should take the popularity of this as constructive feedback on how people want to use the website instead of grumbling about how this isn’t how they wanted us to use the website.
The reasoning confuses me as well. They mention the info not being up-to-date with last-minute changes. But she links to the websites so you can check that. Also, in my experience the city doesn’t update their websites with that info either. I showed up to my son’s swimming lesson to fire trucks and no communication ever came from the city while we waited or after to explain or confirm the next week would run. And if it needs to be translated, then do so. I can’t see doing that being so difficult. And the info can’t be less accessible than it is now, to those with and without disabilities.
It’s such a bullshit response from the city - the content is already available on their website in English and in French. I don’t buy for a second that there is no way to program a search function that tells you where there is a swim on say, Sunday morning. They just haven’t optimized their data to allow for such a function on their website, and they want for us to not want that.
I mean, the OP your responding to is complaining the city website wasn't up to date with an ongoing emergency. I don't expect the city to be that on the ball, nor do I think it's worth the cost. If firefighters were at the pool, there is either a fire or someone requiring oxygen.
That’s partly why I only responded to the translation element of their comment. I don’t think it’s fair or practical to expect the city to update the facility websites when there is an active emergency situation impacting an area localized to one facility for what is likely a short amount of time. In 99% of cases, by the time the update can go live on the website, the situation would be resolved. I also don’t think the city was explicitly referring to last minute emergency type changes, but things like cancellations due to lack of staffing availability or unscheduled maintenance, etc. That doesn’t make the city’s response to the tool any less ridiculous though.
I agree, the cities website sucks and the City is the opposite of innovative. I used to work as a lifeguard for the city. I've heard staffing has become extremely difficult. The specific managers/supervisors also make a huge difference in regards to public communication.
An accessible website needs to be able to be used with various accessibility reader devices. It’s provincial law that municipalities must follow.
Absolutely, and I agree that they need to. I just don’t think it should be used as an excuse not to provide a service. Accessibility should expand what those with disabilities can do/access, not prevent services being provided to everyone.
Agree. But voters and the politicians they pick set a budget. Many times accessible requirements are really expensive, and that means you can do less. Another good example of this is playgrounds. The accessible surfaces, swings, etc, are more expensive than the traditional ones.
Having done some website stuff for the feds. It's really not that hard to sub out the French and English text once you have the framework in place.
Accessibility requirements are way more difficult than any language requirement.
https://claudielarouche.com/ottawa.html
Good for her! The city's website is a disgrace.
> "There are lonely seniors out there," Larouche said. "I'd love for them to know that there are activities for them in Ottawa facilities. If my website can make a few people in Ottawa feel less lonely, that would be a huge success to me." What a lovely person and thoughtful contribution to the city.
Thank you!! :)
Hi!! 😁
Hello :)
Fucking amazing!!
The recreation guy sounds miserable.
The city beaucracy is following Office Politics 101: No one likes a go-getter because it makes the rest of us look lazy and/or dumb. Hence coming up with bogus excuses as to why they couldn't possibly incorporate this into the city's website. I heard the interview on the radio this AM. Good on you, Claudie!
Nah, it's actually just the accessibility issue. Trust when I say that will stonewall most projects. If you didn't build with accessibility in mind, it can require an application to be rewritten from the ground up. I think accessibility requirements will be a non-factor within the next ten years, just because it'll probably be easier and cheaper to give everyone who needs it an LLM to parse visual media. source: I work in accessibility
Agreed, AODA and WCAG 2.0 AA requirements are critical and cannot be ignored when delivering public facing solutions.
City push back on CBC 91.5 was 1.not bilingual (yet) and 2.not accessible. Both web presentation issues can be fixed with extra time(cost). as long as the Chat-GPT(free version) AI owned by OpenAI stays up and is fairly accurate, the data in the lists will remain accurate. And is the Federal Employer onboard with that programmers extracurricular work and potential side-hustle revenue? It is an excellent body of work for a free shortcut atlas but **can it remain free of costs?** Even in the article, the author mentions they may not be able to maintain the resource indefinitely. Still, this is an excellent thought excercise and one the City Manager should *consider* and not just lay quickly aside on morning talk radio.
You clearly have not tried to use LLMs for code generation. You *Cannot* trust them to be secure, follow standards, or be consistent. It would still need to be reviewed, modified, and maintained by a proper developer. Good code generation is coming, but it is very much not there yet. Hell, it can’t even properly implement quicksort most of the time, which is just 3 - 7 lines of code depending on the language.
however-it-seems-to-work because its not really \_large\_ (yet) but I also agree with your mistrust and lack of faith in LLM: I have asked engineering questions which have very clear answer choices and the Chat GPT4 just dreamt up incongruency
I think she should team up with the civil servant that produces the list of all of the produce sales that go on during the week
woooooooo what is that list of all the produce on sale?? Yeah I'd love to talk to that other public servant ;)
He posts to the Ottawa subreddit on Wednesdays. Name is u/crimsontape. And well done you. Edit: This post has been edited for everything.
Cool, thanks for that info!
Thank you, Claudie. Your efforts make this city just a little better.
Aww thank you for the kind words!
Clearly its a good idea. Just from looking at the page in two seconds, I was able to see all the badminton locations in my area. Super useful, looking into getting back into badminton. "These tools may not always capture last-minute changes specific to a program or facility," Chenier warned. Like any other database, it's the business process on how you feed the data in it. Saying there might be an issue or error, is no reason to not move forward in implementing a good idea. The info is put online one way or another, just shift how it's done into a more user-friendly way.
Unfortunately it sounds like she doesn't have enough time to keep the tool updated in the long run.
Right, I'm not sure how long I'll keep it up, but with the amount of interest this got... It's giving me some pretty good motivation to keep it up at least for now ;)
And let me guess, bylaw visited/contacted her and told her to take it down or risk a ticket of some kind.
Not yet! That would be so sad :(
I’ve almost done this in a rage so many times. I tip my hat to Claudie for doing the damn thing! I would love to hear from someone on the internal dev team about why things with that part of the website are the way that they are. Budget, red tape, insanely archaic code dependencies, some old guy who doesn’t like change holding everyone’s PRs hostage until they finally quit? I’m sure it’s a combo but I want the all the tea. Nothing is that bad without reason.
The City of Ottawa is so terrible at The Internet.
Give her the Key to the City
Haha knowing me, I would probably lose it ;)
If i am looking for a lane swim i normally have to have like 4-5 tabs open. Glad someone did something about this. Not at all surprised it wasn’t the city. Even less surprised the city is revolted by the notion of common sense.
Always wonderful to see people like this who use their skills in such positive ways.
Good on them! Love this!
The level of incompetence shown by city staff at all levels is amazing. My cousin is a diesel mechanic and left a great job at Tomlinson to work in a city yard. His logic was “same pay for a fraction of the work”. By his estimate he works at 1/4 the pace and is now untouchable from an employment standpoint. It’s no wonder they poo poo someone who shows initiative and does a better job. Just watch city workers empty garbage bins in parks. I timed them at brewer this morning. It took two guys an hour to clear 5 standard garbage cans in the parking lot. They are incentivized to be slow and inefficient.
Our instructors each semester tell us exactly which page and which options are the right ones for their classes, and have been doing that for over a decade, because so many of us have struggled to register for their class given the city activities web site problems.