The annual ALGIM conference offers participants a range of inspirational speakers, presentations and technical training programmes. 

The 2009 event, themed “Opportunities Through Technology”, explored the latest social, educational and financial opportunities that technology is providing within local government. 

Delegates were acquainted with groundbreaking case studies by numerous New Zealand councils that entered the prestigious ALGIM Innovation Awards, sponsored by Microsoft NZ. 

The national awards programme showcases top IT solutions that are leading local authorities into the future and recognises outstanding projects that apply technology in innovative ways.  In 2009 more councils than ever before shared their successes as an expert panel of judges selected the supreme winners. 

FIRST PLACE: NORTH SHORE CITY COUNCIL

Online Consenting Solution (OCS)

North Shore City Council was the winner of the 2009 ALGIM Innovation Awards for its Online Consenting Solution.  The Council turned a need to increase efficiency and reduce costs into an opportunity to significantly improve customer experience by revolutionising the entire building consent process, saving time and money internally and for its customers.

The Online Consenting Solution (OCS) provides customers with the capability to access an online portal through which they can create, prepare and submit building consents electronically for lodgement and processing with the Council, without having to visit a Council office.  This can be done at any time and place, and over a period of the customer’s choice. 

The process enables applicants to upload supporting documentation such as plans and specifications, and pay fees online. All correspondence between the applicant and Council happens through a purpose built communications area, and applicants can track the progress and status of their application throughout the entire consent process. Once the application has been digitally processed by the Council, the final documents are issued electronically to the customer.

Services Development Manager, Tehmus Mistry, believed the innovative project, which is the first of its kind in New Zealand, was worth entering in the 2009 ALGIM Innovation Awards, particularly given current emphasis on the area of processing and issuing consents.

“This award is important to us as it formally recognises the effort that has been made by our staff and business partners in developing and implementing a truly innovative and successful solution that delivers significant benefits to both customers and the Council,” says Tehmus.

“We also believe that this award provides a public platform among our peers through which the excellent opportunity presented by OCS can be leveraged across local government in New Zealand in terms of online consenting.”

Tehmus says the project was developed in line with NSCC’s vision to make information more accessible.

“The building consent process involves a lot of paper and issues associated with handling paper. By allowing our customers to provide building applications in electronic format, and electronically processing these, we eliminate the need for paper and at the same time gain the efficiencies associated with an electronic process,” he says.

The implementation of OCS has brought significant benefits to Council staff and customers, including:

• A simpler, more efficient and faster consent application process
• Improved customer experience

• Reduced carbon footprint as there is no paper generated in the electronic consent process
• Cost reduction associated with printing, postage, scanning, storage and purchasing of paper
• A flexible and open system that supports integration and easy access to data

Users of OCS are delighted that they now have an electronic channel to submit a building consent and are particularly pleased with the system’s time saving features and central communications area.  Currently the Council is fine-tuning OCS based on user feedback. 

Looking forward, Tehmus hopes that the Council’s OCS initiative will assist with The Department of Building and Housing’s plan to enable customers to submit consent applications electronically via a central electronic hub.

“We hope that the Council’s OCS will be adopted as the baseline solution for realising this vision,” he says.

SECOND PLACE: TARARUA DISTRICT COUNCIL

Tararua Inter-town Fibre Project 

Tararua District Council secured open access backhaul fibre to provide broadband in Tararua’s main towns and Council offices at a reasonable cost. The scope of the Council’s involvement in broadband has also developed to meet the government’s policy direction and subsidy allocation with the establishment of a governance structure called Tararua into Broadband.

The initial scope of the project was to achieve connectivity between Eketahuna, Pahiatua, Palmerston North and Woodville. The scope then expanded to Dannevirke as a result of government funding, and later to Norsewood due to additional grants. 

Tararua District Council entered into a three way public/private sector project with vertically diverse telco businesses to create approximately 168km of backhaul open access fibre to service a population of less than 17,800 people for a minimum of 20 to 30 years, or to end of life. 

The large scale telecommunications project compares to the Telecom total network of 20,000 km of fibre and the annual target of new fibre in 2008/09 of 900km, with the Tararua project measuring the length of about 18% of the national annual Telecom build.

Broadband is now available to hospital and health providers, schools, businesses, farms and homes throughout Tararua. Wireless services are also rolling out to the towns using the low cost back-haul. 

The project has received ministerial commendation and is influencing government policy development.  It provides a stable platform for council IT services across a large geographical area with the potential to join or host future joint services with other organisations.

THIRD PLACE: AUCKLAND REGIONAL COUNCIL

RENEW Waste Exchange

Auckland Regional Council (ARC) encourages the diversion of business and industrial waste from landfills by facilitating recycling and raising awareness of waste minimisation. The Resource Exchange Network for Eliminating Waste (RENEW Waste Exchange) is a recycling service managed by the ARC to meet this objective.

The service is an effective interface for waste generators and waste users to share information on industrial by-products, surplus materials and waste through a website (www.renewwasteexchange.org.nz). 
However, recent feedback on the website from both users and ARC staff raised the need for an upgrade to the site that would allow business-to-business interaction between companies in the Auckland region, with context to availability or demand of recyclable/renewable waste in an easy-to-use and cost-effective manner.

The recently upgraded website has a range of new features, including the ability to send appropriate notifications to registered users and administrators for key actions such as the addition or expiration of a listing. 
Also of note is the site’s improved search functionality which matches and outputs results against both recycler and RENEW waste exchange data, and also provides KPI reports to measure the usage and other parameters of the system.

The new website has received positive feedback from both external and internal customers of ARC. Users have adapted quickly to the new system and can contribute to the database in a more meaningful and interactive manner which has helped build relationships and improved data accuracy.

By Brooke Tietjens – Marketing and Communications Assistant, ALGIM