Liverpool City Council recently implemented an expansive upgrade of its information technology (IT) infrastructure across the organisation, and teamwork has been key to its success.
Liverpool City Council oversees one of the largest local government areas in New South Wales. It covers 42 suburbs that consist of highly developed urban locations, rural and semi-urban areas. The region is growing. By 2035, Liverpool will be the size of Canberra, with its population projected to almost double in the next twenty years. This massive growth, and combination of urban and rural areas, places extreme pressure on Council’s ability to provide efficient and effective services to the community.
Effective IT solutions are crucial to Council’s performance as both an employer and a service provider. The community increasingly expects to engage and transact with Council online and via mobile technology and Council staff are heavily reliant on IT to carry out their work efficiently and effectively.
For the last 18 months Council has run an extensive program upgrading IT infrastructure.
A new, much faster and more reliable exclusive fibre-optic network has been implemented.
Taking advantage of this new network, a Virtual Data Centre (VDC) in a private cloud has been established.
Council business systems have been migrated from legacy data centre to the VDC. Council used the transition of business systems to the VDC as an opportunity to upgrade its business systems and underlying operating systems, databases, etc.
Now implementation and enhancement of online services are underway. Tangible benefits include reduction in online development assessments down to four days.
By investing in state-of-the-art, modern IT infrastructure and transitioning to a Virtual Data Centre, Council now has the stepping stones in place to transform the City of Liverpool into a genuine digital city and digital economy.
Fundamental to the success of the program was the emphasis on teamwork – great collaboration and positive partnerships between IT technicians, vendors and business users. End users were actively involved in all changes, piloting new updates and undertaking testing of the systems. Staff were empowered to make decisions that they felt would benefit the business and given the responsibility of implementing actions.
A governance structure was established where subject matter experts were engaged as key partners in the program’s delivery. Program outcomes were regularly reported to a committee made up Council’s entire executive team and chaired by the Chief Financial Officer, ensuring all stakeholders and business needs were regularly communicated and addressed.
The program was rolled out incrementally, placing the overall concept first and limiting risks. Stringent testing and piloting was undertaken to ensure the system worked and any issues with production were identified and fixed before deploying it across the organisation. This also helped staff with changing their work practices and adopting the technology.
This Program has also significantly improved Council’s Disaster Recovery Planning and business continuity, ensuring Council has strong controls in place in the event of a disaster.
To track and measure improvements in the project, quarterly customer surveys were introduced with results indicating that customer satisfaction has improved with Almost 80 percent of respondents expressing satisfaction in the delivery of IT at Liverpool Council.
This program has been a catalyst for innovation and progressive thinking at Council, allowing the organisation to embrace digital technology and implement a range of new initiatives.
