System crash during swim registration blamed on planned software update | CBC News

A “planned software update” is to blame for the latest crash of the city’s registration system for recreation programs, city staff say.

The City of Ottawa’s registration system crashed in August shortly after registration for aquatic programs opened, leaving many users unable to access the website or complete transactions.

The software host, ActiveNet, advised the city that a disruption caused by a planned software update “negatively impacted” hardware designed to balance the high volume of transactions across servers during peak times.

Because the software didn’t perform as intended, staff wrote, “issues arose.”

The information comes in response to a question by Somerset ward Coun. Ariel Troster, who personally experienced issues attempting to register her daughter for swimming lessons.

It will go before the city’s community services committee on Oct. 24.

Years of registration woes

The city’s old web registration portal crashed in August 2022, after years of complaints from residents dealing with a sluggish and malfunctioning system that could only support 450 users at a time.

The replacement system debuted a few months later to some positive reviews alongside a fresh wave of complaints about a mistaken surcharge and malfunctioning payment processor.

The new system was designed to allow more people to complete transactions simultaneously and to join a queue while waiting to register.

Despite those efforts, residents were still unable to register multiple children before programs filled up. Others reported the payment system was hampered by a national outage and some residents within the current city limits were charged a “non-resident surcharge”  because they lived in former municipalities, such as Navan and Cumberland.

Then, this August, the new system crashed, prompting the question from Troster.

In their response, city staff also addressed “the residency issue” of incorrectly applying a non-resident surcharge.

Any residents who entered a typo in their address or street name were automatically charged the extra fee, staff said. The software has addressed the issue by adding a mandatory requirement for users to self-identify as resident or non-resident.