Future Directions is a regular feature. This month we interviewed Jeff Carson, Chief Information Officer, City of Whitehorse, Victoria.
Jeff Carson has been Chief Information Officer at Victoria’s City of Whitehorse for some eight years. In this time, he has served on a number of committees and panels, including Chair of the Municipal Association of Victoria’s Information Technology and Telecommunications (IT&T) Committee.
The IT&T Committee is a sector wide initiative that aims to support collaborative efforts between Councils for IT&T related projects, thus reducing costs and minimising risks.
As Whitehorse’s Chief Information Officer, Jeff Carson’s role involves setting the IT&T strategy for the organisation, resourcing the action plan developed from the strategy and managing the deliverables agreed with each of the stakeholders. He said a key challenge is to sustain high levels of satisfaction from the end users in normal day to day services, while continually changing the environment to make way for new or better applications and services.
“A big part of my role involves talking to Council’s internal business units about what they need and where their market is heading,” he said. “I then provide feedback on how IT can help them and what advancements are happening in the IT&T sector that they may be able to take advantage of.”
Jeff believes that depending on a businesses needs at a particular point in time, skills and abilities required will vary in importance.
“However, I believe one skill that stands out is the ability to relate to people and to be able to listen and talk to them about their customers and their business,” he said. “In a sector where our services are becoming commodities, and the technology less of a black art, the critical success factor is people. The people that are designing and implementing the system, the people using the system, the people that benefit from the improved service – if all three of these groups are communicating, then you are on your way to a successful outcome.”
Jeff Carson said that all Councils have issues and challenges specific to them, but there are a lot of commonalities.
“A key test is helping our customers keep their customers happy, while reducing the cost of service provision; being pulled in all directions by legislative and governance imperatives; and maintaining robust and reliable day to day IT services,” he said. “The Local Government IT&T sector in Victoria is taking advantage of a new initiative that is driven by IT and business professionals in Local Government. The initiative aims to reduce commodity costs (PCs, telephones, office software), then free up scarce resources to focus on areas that have a direct and significant, positive impact on Council staff and residents.
“The simple answer is work together. Rather than each Council in Victoria addressing the same issue or developing common intellectual property, such as a security strategy, 79 times, why not do it once and share it. If you can’t afford to develop a computer service for residents, why not share the costs with other Councils that are also looking to implement similar services.”
Jeff Carson said in the medium term, the Internet will used to provide better service delivery to residents.
“The concept of e-government in Victoria is now a realistic goal thanks to the Local Government and other Government departments sharing a common purpose and a collaborative framework in which to move forward,” he said.
