The Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) recently announced a $25 million cost saving to Victorian Councils as a result of its two year innovative Local Government Online Service (LGOS) delivery project. MAV President, Councillor Brad Matheson, said Stage One of the project had placed Councils across the State at the forefront of simple and efficient online service delivery that meets growing community demand.
“The LGOS project was Australia’s first ‘whole of sector’ initiative to enable Victorian Local Government to become more efficient and deliver 24 hour information and service access to local communities,” Cr Matheson said. “It featured a high degree of collaboration between Councils in utilising common standards and systems to achieve cost reductions.
“To date, $25 million worth of benefits have been reported by participating Councils. This represents more than a four fold return on the investment of $5.7 million received from the Commonwealth Government’s Networking the Nation (NTN) program.
“Benefits for Councils included lower administration and service delivery costs as more people access an increased range of Council information online. The economies of scale achieved by this sector wide approach also delivered additional cost savings for Councils through the provision of free IT security reviews, staff professional development, specialist technical expertise, vendor and contract negotiations.
“This is a particularly significant outcome for rural and regional Councils who have historically experienced greater difficulty in delivering online information and services due to budget, infrastructure and skill limitations. If you access the websites of Victoria’s rural Councils today you will find a far greater level of capability and sophistication than was the case two years ago.”
Initiatives implemented during Stage One included new web and intranet facilities; webcasting of Council meetings; cost effective, sector wide solutions for Council electronic payments and e-purchasing; and advanced information management frameworks that would form the basis of ‘e-government’ in the future.
Councillor Matheson also announced that Stage Two of the LGOS initiative would seek to establish greater integration with State and Federal Government initiatives as well as a national Local Government online strategy.
“These concepts and other ideas will be further explored at the third National Local Government Online Demonstration Conference, to be hosted by the MAV in Melbourne on 11 September 2003,” he said. “The Conference will also showcase some of the award winning online e-services developed through State and Territory Local Government NTN online projects.”
For further information, contact MAV Media Unit on (03) 9667 5521.
