Know what's wrong with Dublin? Then get online

A new website calls for suggestions from the capital's residents to help improve life in the city. Ruadhán Mac Cormaic reports

The idea for the Virtual Institute of Simplicity, a new service for the people of Dublin, was an appropriately simple insight: modern living is an overly complex web that has never been in greater need of disentanglement. One way to do this, according to the institute, is to give people a forum for the sort of creative thinking necessary to untie the knots of needless complication.

The initiative, which has just been launched by Dublin City Development Board, operates through a website, www.dublin.ie/simplicity, where the public can post "complexity reports" - a description of an overly difficult place, system or procedure - and suggest how an aspect of daily life could be simplified, from improving bus timetables to establishing the best place to find a date.

Each suggestion is rated according to the support it receives from website visitors. People who post 10 or more widely supported ideas within a year are awarded a certificate for their contribution to simplifying life in the city.

"Can we not install devices or a coating on the walls of all cinemas and theatres to block mobile-phone signals?" asks one visitor. To counter our enduring propensity to confuse petrol and diesel, writes another, why not design different nozzles for different fuels?

Peter Finnegan, director of Dublin City Development Board, says the institute sits neatly with the board's broader strategy of harnessing the power of public opinion to force change, principally through the Internet. But simplicity doesn't come easy. "The most difficult thing in the world is to be simple," says Finnegan, who has been helped on the project by Edward de Bono, the renowned advocate of lateral thinking as a problem-solving technique.

The growth of Dublin, for example, has created all sorts of transport issues. One idea floated for many years but never acted on was that of an integrated transport ticket that would cover buses, trains and, now, trams. "It just makes sense," says Finnegan. The suggestion has already been posted on the site, along with a similar pitch for ticketless buses, on which passengers could scan a personal card on boarding and have the fare deducted later, in the same way that Eazy Pass allows toll bridges to operate.

Another idea would simplify the electoral register. PPS numbers already track people through life; it should be possible to put all newborn babies on the electoral register, in shadow form, then automatically activate their entries when they turn 18. This would keep the register up to date and simplify first-time voting for young people.

The initial response has been encouraging, says Finnegan. "As well as posting personal things, like 'Can we make dating systems easier?', we're also getting people picking up on the big issues. When we did the consultation process, we found that safety and transport and traffic were people's biggest concerns, followed by questions like health and housing."

Postings reflect these preoccupations: the need for more park-and-ride facilities, improved Dublin Bus timetables ("Why does the timetable tell me when the No 10 left the terminus in Belfield when I'm standing on O'Connell Street?"), secure bicycle parking and mobile hands-free kits in all new cars.

Ideas generated through the forum will proceed beyond the virtual confines of the site, as Finnegan regards their practical application as integral to the project.

"Some ideas come down to the personal responsibilities of citizens," he says. "But others are the concern of organisations in the city. Where an idea gathers support we'll pass it on to the relevant organisation.

"They may respond and say, 'Great idea, but for very practical reasons we can't do it,' and in that case we'll post the response on the site. If they respond and say, 'Great idea, we're taking it on board,' then it goes into a 'praise' list on the site. And if no response comes through it stays on a 'shame' list."

Of course, underlying the virtual institute's approach is the assumption that simplicity is always a good thing. But do experiences such as the electronic-voting controversy not indicate that, faced with radical simplification, people can prove to be strongly attached to life's ritual complexities? Not necessarily, says Finnegan.

"Simplicity doesn't mean refining everything down to the lowest common denominator. Sometimes the simplest way of doing things can be quite complex. If you take the voting issue, it was about trust. That's where the issue arose. People felt that they didn't know anything about the mechanics of the process. The irony is, if you strip it away, that whole debate got into a very complex area, which most people did not understand. So, paradoxically, you could say that people's concern was with keeping things simple."

For all the debate stoked by questions of transport infrastructure and democratic accountability, however, many of the site's visitors chose to take the project on its own, open-ended terms. So, eight randomly selected tips for a simpler life: calm down, say thanks, declutter, recycle, build more playgrounds, do less work, be good and, finally, make Pringles tubes wider, so people can get their hands in.

To contribute a suggestion, log on to www.dublin.ie/simplicity