Electronic Business Papers

Case Study – Willoughby City Council

Introduction

We've all put together or seen a sequence of dominoes standing on end and tumbling in sinuous lines as each one fells the next. If only one domino, which seems to be the correct distance from its neighbour, fails to reach the next, the progress comes to an instant halt.

So it was, some years ago, with agenda and minutes compilation and publication for Willoughby City Council. The process could stop without warning at any point, only unlike the line of dominoes it was not immediately apparent where the thing had died.

Willoughby City Council is responsible for the administration of four Wards covering about a dozen mostly extensive Sydney suburbs to the north of the CBD. The area encompassed ranges from part of Lane Cove in the west to Castle Cove, Castle Crag and Northbridge in the east; and from Roseville and Chatswood in the north to St. Leonards and Naremburn in the south. Approximately 70,000 people live in the area.

Before Infocouncil

Business papers. Prior to switching over to Infocouncil, Willoughby Council was using an older business paper system, with some difficulty. The system relied totally on compulsory Word styles for the manipulation of reports, agendas and minutes.

Recognising the need for change. Speaking of the original system, Jeff Knight, Administrative Services Manager, says "If only one person strayed slightly from the rigidly required style format, the whole system just fell around it." He says Council resolution memos arising from the minutes "just didn't work, and we all got very frustrated," and because everybody who got near the system was required to be style perfect, he says, "we had to do a lot of training."

Why Infosphere? To be fair, good luck played a role in Council's adoption of Infocouncil. Jeff Knight and his co-workers had been having a hard time with the compilation of a particular Council agenda when Infosphere made its initial contact. Manna from Heaven. Oh wow, it doesn't depend on styles! And more … they discovered report writers can use any formatting they like and Infocouncil will compile them all without tripping itself up.

There was one more piece of good luck. Because Infocouncil is so reasonably priced, Administration and IT, who both wanted the program very much, did not have to put any proposal to Council. The total fee fell within predetermined levels of budgeting acceptability.

After Infocouncil

All boxes ticked. There were a few hiccups after initial installation, although Jeff acknowledges that about half were generated in-house. "Your technical officer got us through that, and the main thing was there wasn't a great deal of training required." In addition to being style-free, the main appeals of Infocouncil were "how straightforward it is, and presentation and publication are in Word, which everybody knows." Jeff made brief comments on the performance of each of the main modules of Infocouncil, and also kindly provided ratings, which follow.

Reports. The main gain has been "ease of use for everyone."

Agendas. "Publication was a big thing for us. It used to be a two to three-hour process. Now it's just a matter of pressing a button."

Minutes. "Infocouncil is certainly a lot easier to use."

Actions. "These always fell over in the past because of styles. There were a couple of initial problems with Infocouncil but now it's a pretty straightforward process. It doesn't take long to do."

Ratings

Jeff was asked to rate, out of 10, the main components of the system, in direct comparison with that used previously. Here is the scale he was asked to use:

Footnote to Willoughby case study

Since publishing this case study, Willoughby City Council has started using the DataWorks module for business papers, Minutes Manager. This decision was taken because of the desire to have business papers integrated with records. As at March 2009 Infocouncil is not integrated with DataWorks, although we are working on this. Willoughby continues to use our Document Administration and Standard Conditions modules.