Case Study – LGSA NSW
Introduction
Located in the Sydney CBD, the Local Government Association of NSW and the
Shires Association is a NSW industry body that acts as a voice for Local
Government in NSW. The LGSA NSW seeks to provide leadership to and
advocacy for Local Government, for the benefit of local communities.
Together, the LGSA NSW represents 152 general purpose councils as well as
13 special purpose councils. The Associations represent the views of these
councils by:
I.
Presenting councils’ views to governments
II.
Promoting Local Government to the community
III.
Providing specialist advice and services
Prior to the introduction of Infocouncil the LGSA had been using in-house
developed software to manage reports, agendas and minutes, deciding to make the
transition to Infocouncil in October 2005. We conducted a before-and-after
survey with this organisation in December 2008, and Trish Mayer kindly completed
the survey.
Before and After Infocouncil
Trish noted that when using her organisation’s previous system she
experienced difficulties and drawbacks with several of its key functions. Trish
and management “…realised we needed a better system.” The following
is Trish’s assessment of the state of agendas and minutes before and
after Infocouncil.
Reports
Trish observed that there were problems with reports not being in a
standard format or not using a required style stating that when creating a
report there were “lots of reformatting and changing of styles and bullet
points etc.”
After the implementation of Infocouncil Trish has noticed a change in the
quality of agendas and minutes especially in regards to their appearance “the
appearance is better and it’s great to have attachments directly after their
report.”
Agendas
Agendas were also problematic for Trish where attachments were concerned;
“collating agendas was difficult because all attachments had to be relocated
after the end of the reports.” Trish stated that this continued to be
a drawback because “when recompiling for the Executive Meetings – The
Standing Committee Minutes and reports had to be attached at the back of the
Executive Agenda and when councillors read the reports they had to keep flicking
to and fro the attachments.”
Trish again noted that after Infocouncil this was no longer a problem.
Minutes
Trish advised us that using their previous proprietary product, minutes
were not kept in real time and that “the minute taker wrote them out and they
were done after the meeting.”
After Infocouncil Trish and other members of staff are able to take
minutes live during meetings.
Filing
Trish acknowledged that prior to Infocouncil “filing was a lot more
bulky” with the previous system.
Infocouncil eases this problem by offering an integrated solution with HP
TRIM, the Records Management software used by LGSA.
Trish has found that the ease of access to Information, both past and
present, has become “a lot more efficient.”
Suggestions
Some teething problems were encountered in relation to using email
notifications for report approval and filing Joint Committee reports in TRIM.
These were part of the survey and are reported accordingly.
The suggestion is made that the minute taker would like more shortcut keys
to assist with capturing the minutes.
Rating
Here is Trish’s rating of the previous system and Infocouncil:
|
Previous system
1 2
3 4 5
6 7 8
9 10
|
Infocouncil
1 2
3 4 5
6 7 8
9 10
|
|