When introducing new technology breaks stuff - it's not necessarily a bad thing

We all know that GO Transit has been working diligently to bring real time service updates to its website and applications. Bus passengers were supposed to get a bus tracking application back in January 2014, similar to the application that allows us to track trains, but it has yet to see the light of day.

Remember how I've joked about the hamster being dead when applications (like the fare calculator) found on the GO Transit website misbehaved or malfunctioned? Turns out I may have not been that far off. I've always suspected that service updates and the accompanying emails and text alerts were entered manually, and not tied to any kind of database. I still believe this is a manual process - someone actually physically enters the train and bus status into some kind of web-enabled backend.

Over the weekend, GO Transit went ahead and upgraded their website where the service updates would be distributed by a new, automated app, where updates would be delivered through a feed coming from a third party source. I received an anonymous email where the person wanted to explain what happened because they were frustrated with how the situation was explained in the media.

Because of the weather conditions, the third party source vomited out feed after feed of service disruptions at a pace that the new app built into the website couldn't handle. In an article with the Toronto Star, GO Transit President Greg Percy blamed the website failure on a search function that couldn't handle the demand. He also admitted to updates being done manually. I read that paragraph over and over while trying to tie it in to what he discusses in the next paragraph, that GO is prototyping new technology.

End users don't search GOTransit.com for service updates. That's not how it works. Metrolinx PR spokeswoman Anne Marie Aikins said on Twitter that the site was brought down by a problem "deep in the backend". Nothing made sense. No wonder my anonymous friend was frustrated.

So, to explain it like we're all five:

GO Transit upgraded their website to include a new application (let's call it "new code") to display service updates in real time using information pulled in from an outside source, rather than someone keying in the information manually. The outside source overwhelmed the "new code" and the "new code" caused the entire website to crash.

How hard is it to just say, "We thought this upgrade would work and we're sorry it didn't. It is important to us that we try to introduce new technology that will help our customers plan their commute better. We want customers to be informed about service disruptions when they happen, as opposed to receiving information hours later. Unfortunately, the upgrade failed due to circumstances we didn't anticipate. We plan on fixing the problem and taking measures to prevent this from happening again".

I could get into the whole, "Well you should have tested it first" lecture, but I won't. I spent eight years in IT. You can debut all kinds of "new code" with the best intentions. You can test, and test, and test, and still, something can go wrong. You can run into a situation you never thought about - it doesn't make it right, but it happens.

Personally, I don't care that GO Transit ran into a problem while trying to deliver new technology. The fact they are trying is all I care about. Hopefully they learned some lessons from this exercise, and when they finally roll out that bus tracking app, it works like a charm.