The City of Fredericton has a new app to allow residents customizable notifications for certain city services.
Annick Blizzard with the city’s communications department gave the presentation to council on Tuesday. The city partnered with Voyent Alert app, an Alberta-based company to provide the service.
It allows people to choose what things they want to get notifications for, including closures of services like parks and recreational areas.
“The point of this app is, essentially, that people don’t have to go through social media and scroll and try to find the latest update,” she said in an interview on Tuesday. “So, the notification can come directly to them and they don’t have to go looking around for it or go through a website.”
She said the city does provide alerts on social media, but not everyone has the option.
The notification options include ball field advisories, downtown snow removal, emergency preparedness, general notices, recycling notices, sports field advisories and turf field advisories.
It cost the city about $20,000.
Blizzard said when it comes to the emergency preparedness notification, it is not the same thing as the province-wide Alert Ready system.
Alert Ready is an emergency alert issued by the province, which goes to mobile phones, television and radio. Unlike the Voyant Alert app, you cannot opt of out Alert Ready notifications.
She said there is also no process for issuing an alert to users in the event something urgent happens, like a flooded road that is impassable.
“They would make the decision and then the communications office would put it through. So, there is no real process in the sense that if it needs to be done, it will be done,” she said.
Council did ask whether the app was flexible to adding other services, like school closures or construction notifications, which Blizzard said is the next step.
The communications department will meet with the city’s other departments to sort out what other areas might benefit from a notification service.
Deputy Mayor Greg Ericson said he had lots of interest from people in his ward about this type of thing, adding much of it centred around field closures.
“So I think this will be a very timely service and it’s kind of future-proof — you can add so many things to this as well,” he said.