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Many channels, one team, one system. When I first started in local government, you could open the Yellow Pages and find a full-page listing direct phone numbers for every department in council. Planning, Rates, Waste, Roads, Parks, etc etc etc, each with their own number. Over time, we fixed that. We centralised contact through customer service centres. Instead of expecting residents to understand our internal structure, we gave them a single front door. Walk in. Call up. Spe

Local Government Technology Challenges - 10 years of Audit reports. Local government technology is not just “the IT department.” It underpins the digital channels residents use for rates, permits, libraries, and reporting issues. It includes the corporate platforms running finance, HR, and records, the regulatory systems supporting planning and compliance, and increasingly operational technology such as waste sensors, flood monitoring, and emergency communications. Councils r

Agile has been part of the local government technology conversation for more than a decade. Most councils have tried it in some form. Stand-ups, sprints, backlogs, product owners. Some teams report success. Others quietly move on after a few painful attempts. This raises a question that is rarely asked directly. Can Agile actually work in local government, or is it fundamentally misaligned with how councils operate? The honest answer is that Agile can work in local government

It’s not something that gets much limelight, but when you boil it down, workflow is a fundamental element of local government technology. Almost everything councils do is a workflow. A development application, managing an abandoned vehicle, delivering capital works, responding to a customer request. In every case, there is a sequence of tasks that need to be completed by particular people, in a particular order, using particular information. Historically, this was visible. A