An outdated system: Burnaby's parks and rec program registration set for an overhaul

Long lines, excruciating wait times, and a crashing website.

No, this isn’t what it’s like trying to get tickets to Beyonce’s next tour; it’s what Burnaby residents are experiencing trying to register for the city’s spring sports and recreation programs.

The city’s spring registration opened on March 6 and the process is spread over three days for different programs.

Burnaby resident Rachel Thexton told the Beacon that she lined up nearly two hours early before the 10am registration opened at Eileen Dailly community centre.

She chose to show up in person to avoid backed-up phone lines and a stalling website.

“I’ve been navigating this system now for a couple of years and figured out that really, the best way to do it is to show up in person,” she said.

“I was number seven [in line], which was great. … I didn’t get everything I had requested, but I got most of what I wanted. …So, I was happy with just getting, 80% of what I wanted, that was more than I’d had in the past.”

Thexton, certainly wasn’t the only Burnaby parent who struggled with the registration process, as others shared their experiences on Twitter.

On Tuesday afternoon, the city shared a notice about residents being faced with delays.

“Residents registering for programs have been experiencing delays. We are working to resolve the issue by increasing our registration system’s capacity and our phones are also fully staffed,” wrote the city in a tweet.

The problem with the registration process is with the city’s outdated system, said Thexton.

Burnaby Coun. Daniel Tetrault agrees.

“It’s a combination of demand and an old outdated IT system They’ve been using a system from the ‘90s and it just cannot handle the traffic.”

Tetrault said that the outdated system is an issue that has “been identified for a while” and the city is working to initiate a new registration software.

According to a parks, recreation, and culture commission staff report, the current registration system called CLASS/WeReg has been used since 1994 and has “now reached the end of its life.”

The city is currently working to implement the Parks, Recreation and Culture Management Replacement System (PRISM) Project, which will move the city’s registration process onto a cloud-based system called ACTIVENet.

The city said ACTIVENet will “ultimately [enhance] user experience, online, in person and by phone by providing an improved system and business process and more efficient and effective services for customers.”

Tetrault noted that the new software would be able to handle “all the web traffic so that people wouldn’t get booted from the site or not even be able to access the site altogether.”

Initially, the city planned for ACTIVENet to go live by May 2023, but that has now been pushed to November 2023.

Tetrault has also experienced the struggle of registering his 14-month-old son for programming.

“Anytime I’ve tried to register on these days at 10am or close to 10am I have not been able to get on the website,” he said.

While the city waits for the new software system, Tetrault said the city has tried to implement some measures to ease the wait times, and frustrations.

This includes doubling the number of licenses for customers, which allows for more people to be on the website to register (Tetrault acknowledges that this still isn’t sufficient as there are significant access issues).

Staffing levels at community centres have also been adjusted during registration days. The city has also split up the registration to span over three days (March 6 - recreation, March 7- arts and heritage, March 8 - swimming) making it available to Burnaby residents first.

During last week’s council meeting, Tetrault proposed a motion to address the issue of swimming lesson registration.

The motion calls for staff to develop a plan to reduce the waitlist for swimming classes for the City of Burnaby, and report back to council, and for staff be directed to explore a partnership with the Burnaby School District for a swimming program for elementary students to be introduced in the 2023-24 school year.

Tetrault said that swimming is one of the most in-demand programs in Burnaby, and for many families, private lessons are just not feasible.

With swimming being an important life skill, Tetrault said the hope is to mitigate some of the backlog by ensuring elementary students get a chance to take lessons at school.

That motion was seconded and carried, meaning staff will be instructed to look into the matters highlighted in the motion.

Ultimately the hope is to make Burnaby’s programming more accessible for everyone in the city.

“Right now we’re doing as much as we can to get families into these wonderful programs we offer and the goal is that by the end of 2023, it’s only going to get easier and … we will have functioning, efficient, fast, registration process,” said Tetrault.