On 1 January 2002, Adelaide City Council and the Cities of Marion, Salisbury, and Onkaparinga entered into an agreement with local law firms Thomson Playford and Norman Waterhouse, known as the Greater 6 (G6) contract. The G6 contract was established to outsource the provision of legal services, including legal advice, opinions, litigation and drafting. The G6 contract has now expanded to include the Cities of Charles Sturt and Tea Tree Gully.
The sourcing of legal opinions had been decentralised to the business units in each Council, which had led to an increased potential for duplication of legal opinions being sourced from the providers. To address this issue, Adelaide City Council initiated the Legal Opinions Knowledge Base (LOKB) project. This aimed to develop a centralised Internet knowledge base to be used to request, store and search for information provided by the Legal Providers to the G6 Councils.
A team of four students from the University of South Australia’s Master of Business Information Systems Cooperative Program were engaged to develop system specifications and recommendations for the centralised knowledge base. Development of these specifications involved product research, process analysis and consultation with each of the G6 Councils and Legal Providers.
The LOKB is now a live system being used by the G6 Councils and Legal Providers to request and provide legal opinions online, conduct full text searches of all documents stored in the system including opinions, training notices, presentations, papers, and other legal expertise/information shared between the G6 Councils. This collaboration is leading to a realised quantitative measurement of reduced duplication of legal opinions sourced and reduced legal expenditure for each of the Councils.
The system is expected to generate total savings on legal expenditure of approximately 10 per cent annually for the Councils involved. It is planned that this will be the start of a number of initiatives leading to improved service delivery by member Councils.
For further information , please contact Kate O’Neill, Team Leader, Legal and Risk Support, Adelaide City Council on (08) 8203 7131 or asp.adelaidecitycouncil.com/localshare
