Our local council experience
Local government agencies (councils) are uniquely interesting organisations to work with. They provide literally hundreds of services: rubbish, licenses, park management, parking inspection, dogs, plus much more. They also have the most direct connection with the general public of any level of government, and have the greatest impact on people’s lives.
We’ve worked with councils throughout Australia, which has given us an opportunity to build a good understanding of organisational needs and challenges. We look forward to further building this experience in future projects, and helping to transfer best practices and innovative solutions between councils.
Council intranets
There is a lot happening within councils, and staff need access to accurate and up-to-date information. This can be seen most clearly in the customer service centre and front-desk environments, where members of the public want immediate answers to any of a thousand different questions.
Intranets are therefore a critical tool for councils. Not just to provide information, but to streamline key tasks, improve staff efficiency, and communicate updates and changes.
Step Two Designs are the world’s leading experts on intranets. We’ve published What every intranet team should know, the Intranet Roadmap, 200+ articles, and a range of other reports and resources for intranet teams. We run the global Intranet Innovation Awards, and keynote conferences throughout the world.
We’ve worked with countless organisations to uncover staff needs, develop intranet strategies, help intranet teams to be more effective, and to redesign intranets. This includes a number of in-depth intranet projects within councils, as well as providing targeted assistance to council intranet teams and senior managers.
Our council intranet projects include:
- City of Sydney
- Brisbane City Council
- Woollahra Municipal Council
- Sutherland Shire Council
- Caloundra City Council
- Pine Rivers Shire Council
Beyond this, we have also assisted with broader information management challenges in Councils. This includes evaluating Caloundra City Council’s EDMS classification.
Selecting a new CMS
Council websites are large and information rich. Expectations from ratepayers, members of the public and local businesses are high. As highlighted earlier, there is also an imperative to deliver intranets that help staff to deliver great customer service and streamlined service delivery.
This puts some pressure on the tools used to publish and manage these sites. Selecting the right content management system (CMS) is therefore vital. We have worked with a number of councils to select a CMS, amongst the many dozens of organisations we have helped through this process.
Councils we have helped to select a CMS:
- Hobart City Council
- Sutherland Shire Council
- Tamworth Regional Council
- Woollahra Municipal Council
For all these projects, we defined the scope of the project, often aligning stakeholder expectations in the process. We documented effective and human-readable CMS requirements, and assisted in the creation of a tender or RFP document. We then provided a short-list of potentially suitable products, and in many cases facilitated the vendor demonstrates to ensure they provided the needed information. Throughout the evaluation process we offered expert support and guidance.
(Read more about our content management services.)
Participating in the local government community
We have been honoured to be invited to speak at a number of local government events, including:
- WE Believe in Community conference 2008 (on “open-source CMS is the wrong question”)
- Victorian Local Government Web Users network (on “intranet strategy and management”)
We would be happy to share our experiences at future events, please do get in touch.
Obtain some help
Our services are entirely vendor-neutral, and we target our assistance from a brief engagement through to a full strategic project. We can assist with:
- reviewing a current intranet or website
- developing an intranet and website strategy
- redesigning an intranet or website
- selecting a suitable CMS
- reviewing information management practices
- developing a collaboration strategy
Please contact us for more information.
