Editorial: Council's IT fail not a good look

Anna Wallis PHOTO/FILE

ER, digital city? The epic fail by Whanganui District Council to deliver the local body election results at 3pm on Saturday certainly put a dint in our carefully cultured reputation as an IT-advanced city.

As the 3pm deadline came and went, many people took to Facebook to complain.

Wrote one voter: "WDC: this is embarrassing. News is flying around about results as individual councillors (and the new mayor) announce their election on their own FB pages. Can we please have something official."

The Chronicle resorted to banging on the council offices to try and find someone who could tell us. But no one answered.

Most other councils had their results sorted by 3pm. Why not Whanganui?

It was impossible to get on the council's website. It had crashed.

There were several reasons given by council for the late posting. One was all the candidates had to be notified before voters could be told, which I have never heard of before.

The other reasons, according to the electoral officer: A computer glitch and a rush of last-minute votes. But voting patterns are pretty easy to work out.

And a computer glitch? Again, not a good look for one of the world's "Top7 Intelligent Communities".

Eventually the results were posted on Facebook.

But perhaps it's time to return to the days of a blackboard outside the council offices to announce results. Or a town cryer.

Because if we want to promote ourselves as a frontier town for the use of IT, we had better be able to deliver.