At the City of Port Lincoln Council we utilise ITVision Synergysoft for our financial, rating, personnel and compliance systems.
The implementation of the records management module in 2010 has enabled Council information to become fully integrated, including the lodgement of emails. This records module was a fairly new development, which hadn’t really been ‘tried and tested’ to its full extent, so Port Lincoln was fairly forward looking in using it across the board.
We needed a system that could utilise our current file coding, could ‘talk’ to our existing data, was user friendly, but we didn’t have a lot of budget. Converting the existing electronic records to a compatible format proved to be cost prohibitive, so in the end we decided not to convert but to bring over ‘past records’ on an as needs basis.
A few years earlier, for our file coding, we created file numbers based on their ‘disposal’ under the State Records GDS20. This has proved to be a positive decision, with the GDS numbers coded by function from 1 to 20 being easily identifiable for our staff, and easy to adopt. The GDS numbers are also utilised within our other management systems, including for policy numbering, and for skills and training codes in the Human Resource module.
As a regional council of medium size our staff wear many hats. Multi skilling and cooperative teamwork is a must in achieving our strategic goals and meeting legislative requirements. The development of basic systems and template documentation by the Local Government Association of South Australia (LGASA) is greatly appreciated, as we just don’t have the resources, or in some cases the knowhow, to start from scratch. I think this kind of development is the key for the future, ensuring that our ratepayers’ money is spent on the core requirements for our community, not just on paperwork.
In light of this, I am a big supporter of using the software that you already have to your best advantage. I don’t encourage standalone systems, spreadsheets or information storage. More than anything councils should integrate their data wherever possible and push the boundaries with their software providers. I know that our providers often say to us, ‘why hasn’t anyone else asked us if we can do that?’.
