City of Ottawa program registration glitch frustrates residents

The city of Ottawa's annual online registration blitz for fall swimming lessons briefly crashed Monday night.

It was not an uncommon experience for residents trying to sign themselves or their children up for lessons, but it comes after the city launched a new registration platform to help avoid the perennial issues with online signups.

Coun. Riley Brockington said Monday night that around 5,000 registrations were processed between 9 p.m. and around 9:50 p.m. when he posted on social media to say people were reporting problems.

Iain Murphy tried to sign his kids up for swimming lessons Monday. He even prepared himself.

"We had multiple browsers open and practiced clicking on the links and even going through the motions," he told CTV News Ottawa. 

But despite all that training, the city's registration site failed on him, sinking expectations that his three children would get a spot.

"The time came and crash," he said. "It kind of got better about 45 minutes in. We were able to get one kid into the cart. It was pretty dismal."

He stayed up unti midnight trying before calling it quits.

"We kind of abandoned it. We didn’t even put ourselves on the wait list," he said. "Swimming is a life skill it’s so important to us and in the past we've gone out of town for swim lessons to Carleton Place and we've had to pay extra because we are not residents there and it adds up having three kids … i just expect a little bit more in today’s age of technology."

The wait list itself is long. The city says about 15,000 people are waiting for a spot after more than 25,000 did manage to register.

Some, like Gino Urbisci, were able to successfully sign up.

"I’m not a tech guy, but I'm assuming it's the influx of people who are trying register all at the same time."

The city's new system was supposed to solve this issue. For years, parents have complained about the process to register for swimming lessons.

"We've always called it registration battle night," said Crawford Wice. "You just pray everything goes smoothly."

In a statement to Newstalk 580 CFRA, the city of Ottawa said the web host encountered an unknown issue.

"During the launch of the City’s fall aquatics registration at 9 p.m. last night, the registration service hosted by ActiveNet experienced technical issues that made it difficult for some residents to access the registration portal to complete their transactions," said the statement, attributed to recreation, cultural and facility services general manager Dan Chenier. "City staff and the ActiveNet team responded quickly and were able to restore functionality about 40 minutes after it occurred. The system is currently working as intended and processed 25,240 receipts by 11 p.m."

Chenier said the city is working with ActiveNet to understand what happened and prevent it from happening again.

Registration for other fall activities begins at 9 p.m. Wednesday.

--With files from CTV News Ottawa's Tyler Fleming.

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