New search engine, leak detection and a new calculator

Increasing residents' self-service through smart digital solutions is a clear objective in the council's service provision. The council's website is continually being improved. Several new features have been introduced in recent months, with many more in development.

When is the next rubbish collection on my street?

This is a fairly common question we get from residents, whether it's about the grey bin or the blue paper bin. Until now, that information has been available in rather inaccessible PDF documents.

It is therefore a pleasure to say that now is  A simple lookup for the next rubbish collection date has been launched. . You simply enter a street name and number, and you will be told when you can expect the next collection.

Nursery fee calculator

Work has been carried out on the development of several calculators that make the council's services more transparent. One of them is already It's now live, but there's a calculator for nursery fees..

The nursery fee schedule is not straightforward; various discounts are available and it can sometimes be difficult to work out the parents' actual cost. The calculator is simple, you just need to enter two parameters: the number of children and the length of stay.

These solutions for debugging and calculators are the result of one of the summer's innovation projects and were developed by a computer science student at the University of Reykjavík, Pétur Ingi Sigurðsson, under the guidance of webmaster Garðar Rafn Eyjólfsson.

Smart search engine

This spring, we launched an improved search engine on our website, which we're proud of because it's pretty clever!

• Firstly, it is very fast, delivering results extremely quickly.
• Secondly, users can filter the results by several categories and thus get results for minutes, documents, news and staff. Searching meeting minutes has, until now, only been available via the meeting minutes page on the website, and the same applies to staff searches, which have only been available in a dedicated lookup.
• Thirdly, it should be noted that different types of content carry different weight; for example, pages on the website are ranked higher than documents, news items and minutes.
• Fourthly, the search is forgiving if you type in common misspellings, e.g. regarding y or i or letter transpositions.
• In the fifth place, there is a certain degree of editorial control over the results; we know that certain keywords are more common than others, and we direct users in the right direction and make suggestions for results as they type.
• In the sixth place, the search returns results for the singular and plural forms of words, as well as their grammatical cases. You can type a word in the singular nominative case; for example, the word 'teikning' will immediately return results for 'teikningar', 'teikningin', 'teikningarnar', etc.

Web form improves accessibility

This winter, a web-based text-to-speech tool was added. On every page and news article on the website, you can click the „Listen“ button to have the text read aloud by the tool.

The web-based application highlights the words and sentences it reads aloud each time, and this support is suitable for blind and visually impaired people, as well as for dyslexic individuals and those who are learning the language. The web-based application is also useful for those who, for some reason, find it difficult to read the screen due to, for example, lighting conditions or while driving.

Other innovations

Other ongoing projects on the council's website and service portal include a complete overhaul of the website's text, with the aim of simplifying the presentation of content and making it more understandable. A new English website is in the pipeline, designed especially to meet the needs of immigrants, with key service information available in English.

A complete review of My Pages is underway with the aim of simplifying the layout, making messages on the website and in applications more user-friendly, increasing self-service, improving the user experience and service to residents. We aim to deliver continuous improvements to the website, rather than launching one single, major overhaul. The number of online applications has increased at the expense of PDF applications, which will hopefully disappear entirely in the coming quarters. Electronic signatures for applications will be introduced, which will save a great deal of time and simplify the entire processing.

A complete overhaul of the council's design standard is underway, which will impact and harmonise the look and feel of digital solutions in the coming quarters.

Much more could be mentioned, but we will leave it at that for now and let the works speak for themselves as they are completed.