Lawyer Anna Willis’ desire to create change has driven her to create issue.watch, a portal for people to express concerns that are not being solved by other organisations and companies.

Willis said none of the current avenues to lodge a complaint necessarily result in fundamental changes in organisational behaviour, are often slow to respond, and the process and results are not transparent or consistent across complaints. “So many people feel powerless when it comes to resolving issues with telecommunications, aged care companies, government departments and other big organisations… they feel ignored and unheard,” Willis said. “So many issues could have been dealt with much earlier if there had been more awareness around the volume of complaints.”

issue.watch is an initiative on a mission to shine a light on issues affecting the community and allows consumers to voice their opinion. Its aim is to build a community of consumers and organisations who want to see issues resolved by identifying, spotlighting, acknowledging and maintaining a focus on solutions on collective issues. “We aggregate issues to establish trends and magnitude, so organisations are forced to acknowledge significant consumer issues, and forced to act,” Willis said.

This platform is available to all community members feeling like they are voicing their issues but are still yet to be heard. It is a reminder that you have a voice, and issue.watch is a platform where your voice will be heard. “issue.watch is about joining voices about similar issues, to become a megaphone; a loud voice on significant issues that impact our communities and drive change,” she said. “It is easy to ignore a person; it’s harder to ignore a collective.”

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