Case Study – Colac Otway Shire Council
Introduction
The Colac Otway Shire is one of the most picturesque municipalities in
Victoria, covering a diverse area from volcanic lakes, craters and
plains in the North, through the hinterland forests of the Otway Rangesto the Great Ocean Road coastline.
Colac is the key industrial, commercial and service centre for the Shire and
surrounding region with a population of 12,000.
Apollo Bay is the other major urban centre with a permanent
population of 1,000 that swells to over 15,000 during the summer season.
The main industries within the region include primary production (dairy,
beef, sheep, crops, horticulture and organic farming), tourism, fishing, timber
food processing, manufacturing and service, construction, retail and wholesale.
Prior to the introduction of Infocouncil, Council used Word
templates for reports, agendas and minutes, and they distributed and recorded
these manually. Colac Otway Shire decided to make the transition to
Infocouncil in September 2008. We conducted a before and after satisfaction
survey with this council in December 2009 and Suzanne White, Executive
Assistant, was kind enough to share her experiences with us. All quotations are
from Suzanne’s survey form.
Before and After Infocouncil
Reports
Suzanne has found that overall the process of creating reports using
Infocouncil is much easier than council’s previous manual system. We asked
Suzanne to compare Infocouncil with council’s previous system, in four main
aspects of report writing, and this is what she had to say:
- In response to achieving standard, council-wide formatting, Suzanne
observed that Infocouncil is “good, as it is easy for staff to use.”
- Concerning inserting and handling hard copy and electronic attachments
Suzanne noted that Infocouncil (is) “much easier as staff can add attachments
to their reports when compiling them.”
- For the procedure of getting reports approved, particularly if
there is more than one authoriser, Suzanne again observed that this was
“easier than with our previous system.”
- Lastly, when converting a report from normal to confidential,
Suzanne has noticed a large improvement here, stating that there is a “big
difference. Infocouncil is a lot more user friendly than our previous agenda
system”
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Agenda
Suzanne asserted that Infocouncil has allowed “significant time saving
especially in the production of the agenda.” Suzanne’s feedback
regarding agenda compilation follows:
- In the areas of recompiling and repaginating as well as
incorporating late reports into an agenda, Suzanne notes that Infocouncil is
“significantly easier to use than the previous program.”
- Regarding inefficiencies in compilation from a formatting point of view,
Suzanne says these are “minimal.”
- The ease of changing the queue order of reports “very
easy”
- Procedure for dealing with confidential items “good”
- Any irritations or difficulties with filing “no difficulties
experienced so far.”
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Minutes
While Suzanne acknowledged that there were a few hiccups that Council had
to work through in this area, she also stated that the main functions involved
in minute compilation are “easier and much quicker than our previous system.”
Action Sheets
Prior to adopting Infocouncil, council had to manually distribute and
monitor actions arising from the minutes.
Using Infocouncil, council is now able to distribute and monitor action
sheets electronically via email. Suzanne has found that advising council
officers of specific work requirements arising from resolutions is “now a
more simplified process and is simple to monitor.”
Overall Rating
Here is Suzanne’s overall rating of the two systems:
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Previous system
1 2
3 4 5
6 7 8
9 10
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Infocouncil
1 2
3 4 5
6 7 8
9 10
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