Western Downs Regional Council in southeast Queensland has introduced the newest member of its corporate communications team – COLIN.
No ordinary staff intranet, COLIN aka ‘Council’s Online Information Network’, is a user friendly, central communication hub that connects staff with up to the minute news, information and resources.
COLIN has been developed using Resolute’s Council Business Centre (CBC) platform, which allows Council to control the design of content and layout pages inhouse, with the Resolute team providing technical support.
A central information source is an essential tool in the efficient operation of the amalgamated Western Downs Regional Council, as its four customer service centres are geographically spread across a region spanning 38,000 square kilometres.
A staff intranet was proposed in response to feedback from staff, both administrative and field, regarding the frustration of accessing ‘the right information’ easily.
From the outset, Council aimed to create an intranet that would be used by staff on a daily basis, providing tools and information to assist in work performance. To create further buy in from the team, a competition was held to invent a unique name to brand the staff intranet.
From a long list of fantastic entries, Council’s Online Information Network was selected and a caricature was developed to give COLIN a fun and friendly personality.
COLIN’s caricature also created a unique separation between Council’s corporate website and the intranet.
The solution was to use Council’s existing information management system DataWorks as the controlled source of all information available on COLIN.
A new intranet classification and index structure was created in DataWorks with documents stored there automatically pushed out onto COLIN.
The Dataworks – CBC integration was developed by Resolute further enhancing the value of the CBC solution.
“This functionality has been a great success, particularly with field staff and Councillors now able to access information and resources important to their role without having to be trained in administrative systems such as DataWorks,” said Western Downs CEO Phil Berting.
He said a popular section featured on the home page is ‘COLIN’s Champions’ where the team are able to congratulate their fellow colleagues for a job well done.
“COLIN’s home page is updated daily with new announcements, to welcome new staff members, acknowledge achievements and gather feedback through staff voting polls,” he said. “Council’s Team Update newsletter is also distributed on COLIN and nuisance emails are greatly reduced thanks to the Social page which contains a ‘Buy/Sell/Swap’ section.”
Phil Berting said that moving from an Intranet 1.0 operation and mindset to an Intranet 2.0 platform that promotes collaboration, people connection and ongoing dialogues that augment, but not replace the traditional top down communication model was a brave thing for Council to do and is in line with latest trends.
For further information contact Council’s Web Services Officer Angela Lowe on (07) 4672 1209, or contact Resolute on (07) 3238 5600.
