Case Study – Manly Council
Introduction
Manly is one of the nationally and internationally best known holiday destinations
in Australia. Famously 'seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care',
Manly is described by its council as 'a thriving community where residents and visitors
enjoy a clean, safe and unique natural environment enhanced by heritage and lifestyle'.
An interesting historical sidelight is that Captain Arthur Philip named the area
Manly in honour of the aborigines he found living there. As he observed in a letter
to a friend: "… their confidence and manly behaviour made me give the name
of Manly Cove to this place".
In February 2003 Manly Council became one of the early adopters of Infocouncil for
the management of its agendas and minutes process. Relative to other councils of
similar size, Manly's internal processes involve a large number of council officers
in various aspects of the business papers process, and hence the prospect of automation
appealed strongly.
Before Infocouncil
Ariel Ellis, former Manager eBusiness & Information Systems, arranged for four key
Infocouncil users to meet to discuss Infocouncil. This case study is based on information
provided by these officers: the Administration Manager, the Manager Community Relations,
the Office Manager Corporate Services and an Administration Officer closely involved
in the Agenda and Minutes process. Quotations are directly from their joint feedback.
Reports
Although reports were typed into a template, they "always required re- formatting".
Getting reports approved was a manual process and very time consuming. Dealing with
attachments also took more time than this activity should need.
Agendas
Because reports needed so much re-formatting, the manual process of agenda compilation
was "very time consuming". It was not possible to incorporate late reports, so these
were added under separate cover. As to changing the queue order of reports, this
"was not possible". Confidential items could not be incorporated in the normal agenda,
but had to be "created in a separate agenda as it was not possible any other way".
Minutes
Minutes were kept in real time, but the process was time consuming.
Publishing to web
This was also a slow process.
Rating
These officers gave the original process for processing reports, agendas and minutes
an overall rating of 3 out of 10.
After Infocouncil
Some early misgivings
When change was being contemplated, quite a few council officers had difficulty
even contemplating that their present system could be improved. They were strongly
wedded to the status quo, and resisted the introduction of Infocouncil on
the traditional grounds, 'Where's the need? If it ain't broke don't fix it'.
The software soon proved its worth.
Reports, agendas, minutes and action sheets
The appearance and quality of agendas and minutes are now rated as being "very good".
The overall process is more efficient, and access to information, present and past,
is "a lot easier". Using Infocouncil's action sheets to advise people of council's
resolutions is particularly useful. "In an item with multiple resolutions, we can
now enter information to let the action officer know which ones are applicable to
them."
Efficiency of time usage
Those who compile and handle agendas and minutes now rate the process as "a lot
quicker and easier".
Responses to the change
Although most Councillors did not notice any transition from the old to the new
system, senior managers, including the relevant director, are "very happy" with
the improvements. More junior staff are also "very happy - it's user friendly and
makes the process of minute taking easy."
Rating
Infocouncil received a rating of 8 out of 10, as compared with the rating of 3 for
the original system.
Some Suggestions
In our survey form we have included a final section seeking suggestions for how
Infocouncil could be improved. We are grateful to these four council officers for
making the following suggestions:
- Would like a search engine which can go directly to any resolution.
- If there is a last minute change to a minuted item, all action sheets have to be
uploaded and re-assigned. Would like to be able to upload/refresh individual action
sheets.
These suggestions will be considered for future releases of Infocouncil.
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