Please see the screenshot of the cat impound register used at GRAS for 2015 which we obtained recently under GIPA. Please note how the cat impound numbers jumped from 269 to 449 on 29/05/15. We emailed Council in 2015 when we noticed that the cat impound numbers jumped - why was this error picked up and brought to Council’s attention by members of the public? When we first inquired about this jump of numbers, Council’s response was “This system was amended to remove the duplication of numbers assigned to both cats and dogs. The current system is numerical in sequence and applies to all animals.” We found this explanation difficult to understand so we inquired again. Council’s response this time stated “The impound numbers are sequential. These numbers are applied through a database system and the staff have no control of the database. By way of explanation, the numbers start at 1 at the start of the calendar year. As an animal (cat or dog) enters the shelter, they are assigned a number. For this year, the number is coded 15/d001 (for a dog) and then if the next animal is a cat, it receives the number 15/c002 and so on." As this statement was not supported by the impound numbers on Council’s website (the cat numbers were in the 600s and the dog numbers were in the 900s), we inquired yet again. This time Council stated “The impound numbers do run sequentially, that is, dogs start at ImpD15/001 on the 1st of January 2015 and run consecutively until the end of the calendar year. The same is for cats, they start at the beginning of the year and run from ImpC15/001 consecutively throughout the year. Both dogs and cats have separate impound numbers and as of today’s date the impound numbers for each are up to ImpC15/0607 for our cats and ImpD15/0947 for our dogs.” All Council had to do when we first inquired was to look up the impound register and see that cats and dogs were on separate registers. Instead it took multiple emails from both Myriam and Simone to get an answer that was understandable. We accept that mistakes can occur, but we do query how they are investigated by Council. If this is how Council carries out its investigations on such a simple matter, how can we as rate payers rely on any of Council’s investigations? Because we would like to get an accurate response from Council, which often requires multiple emails, we have been given a copy of Council’s Unreasonable Complainant Contact Policy. ***EDIT*** We would like to thank everyone for their input - reading the comments is uplifting and encouraging. Emailing Council took more than 3 emails from both Myriam and Simone before an understandable answer was given. We wonder how often such errors occur and how they affect Council's statistics if they are not picked up. Council's explanation as to the 180 jump in numbers was: "it appears that the IT numbering system (earlier this year) failed to apply consecutive numbers to the cats... this was at a time when a system upgrade was underway”. Similarly we noticed the errors on Council's statistics when they were uploaded to their website in 2016. These errors spanned a three-year period and again were brought to Council's attention by us. Council's explanation was "The discrepancies have occurred due to some data being duplicated... In the new system it is not possible to monitor duplicated entries and following the discovery of this issue, the figures are now manually reviewed and have been adjusted." It is difficult to understand why reviews and reconciliations of records were not carried out as a matter of course after the electronic system was implemented. Electronic systems are susceptible to errors, and still require manual reviews and reconciliations to be performed. Under GIPA we have obtained the impound registers since GRAS began using an electronic system. As yet we have not found any duplicated numbers. For example, incoming cats for 2013/14 totalled 339 in the original statistics, but in the updated statistics they increased to 363. In the original statistics there were 69 dogs in the “Other” category (these are animals that died at the facility rather than being euthanised), but in the updated statistics the number of dogs in this category increased to 77 dogs - how is this duplication? If data is duplicated, then when it is revised the duplicated data should be removed, so the numbers would decrease, not increase. It would be interesting to know how these errors occurred.