Case Study – Tenterfield Shire Council
Introduction
The Tenterfield Shire is located on the New England Highway, inland from Byron Bay
and close to the Queensland border.
The town of Tenterfield, being on the Northern Tablelands at a height above sea
level of nearly 900 metres, experiences four distinct seasons each year, with surrounding
countryside ranging from rugged mountains to rural landscapes.
In 2005, Council decided to acquire Infocouncil for the electronic management of
its business papers. Before the pressure of time and work became too great, Tenterfield
Shire Council had previously compiled and distributed its agendas and minutes using
only Word templates and hard copy printouts, and had put up with many hours of labour
and frustration.
Before Infocouncil
The main drawback for Council to using only MSWord for the business papers process
was the time that had to be invested in each step. The limitations of these processes
were not exposed until increasing development activity put pressure on the whole
system of governance at Council. Even before these limitations became apparent,
however, there were irritations and inefficiencies, as follows:
Reports
Incorporating electronic and hard copy attachments into an agenda
was time consuming, as was cutting and pasting when changes in the queue order of
reports were required. The General Manager was sent hard copy reports for his approval,
which were sent back to the writer if changes were required. Then re-submitted,
and so on.
Agendas
If the agenda as originally compiled could remain unaltered, no time
wasting difficulties were experienced. When asked whether recompiling agendas involved
significant inefficiencies, Executive Assistant to the General Manager, Ms Karen
Stewart, replied: "… yes, every time. Sections of the agendas were printed
on coloured paper depending on the department, then physically collated." Recompiling
to include changes therefore required extremely close attention to ensure the integrity
of the colour coding.
Minutes
Minutes were not kept in real time, and were time consuming to set
up.
Publishing to web
This was also time consuming, as each Word document had
to be converted manually to PDF, with all documents then joined together to make
the PDF agenda.
After Infocouncil
After Infocouncil Initially, the changeover from MSWord to Infocouncil was not accepted
with universal warmth and enthusiasm.
Rumblings at changeover
The Councillors had become accustomed to the
colour coded business papers. One Director felt the new system did not suit his
approach to work, although the Corporate Services and Environment departments were
happy to make the change.
Reports, agendas and minutes
Ms Stewart says that agendas and minutes
"… appear much more professional". Reports are now sent electronically to
the GM for approval and he can make any required minor adjustments electronically
before forwarding them for inclusion in the agenda.
Efficiency of time usage
According to Ms Stewart, with Infocouncil time use
efficiency is "… very much improved. Previously I had to do the table of contents
manually and each section also had a table of contents. With the system generating
the table of contents, it saves me a lot of time."
Publishing to web
Ms Stewart says publishing to web has proven to be "…
very easy."
Responses to the change
Councillors "… still miss the colour
coded sections," Ms Stewart reports. She, herself, is "… much more happy using
Infocouncil than the old manual way of producing agendas and minutes." Management
is happy unless "… one of us has missed a step."
Rating the past and present processes
Ms Stewart gives a rating of 7 out
of 10 for Infocouncil, as compared with her rating of 4 for the original system.
Some Suggestions
In the current version of our survey form we have included
a final section seeking suggestions for how Infocouncil could be improved. We are
grateful to Ms Stewart for making the following suggestion:
Suggestions will be considered for future releases of Infocouncil.
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