Councils across Australia are being urged to embrace digital service transformation.
As business and community expectations evolve, Council capacity to provide essential services is increasingly challenged. Digital service transformation is often proposed as a way of producing better outcomes. This includes using more flexible platforms to reduce the time to innovate, and more efficient platforms to reduce the cost to deliver.
Local government organisations often struggle to effectively balance efforts to modernise away from legacy systems, maintain business as usual in ICT, and find the resources to experiment with innovation.
The footprint of Council ICT environments is growing – spanning multiple surfaces from on-premise to cloud, and extending from once-in-a-generation legacy ERP to evolving at the speed of generative AI, but workforces are often lagging behind in terms of availability and skillsets.
“Many Councils still rely on outdated manual processes to manage their IT systems, which is not only inefficient but also prone to costly errors,” Orbus APAC Managing Director Peter White said.
“By adopting single-pane-of-glass enterprise architecture platforms like OrbusInfinity, Councils can gain visibility into how small changes in one area flow through into others or across system-process boundaries and can understand the independencies between different change activities. This insight and agility are essential in keeping pace.”
OrbusInfinity offers Councils a comprehensive platform for building and maintaining a multi-layered business, from functions, through processes, and down to systems and data. Building an integrated business-process-data-systems map across a Council using enterprise architecture and a toolchain like OrbusInfinity can significantly improve the chances of success in delivering on the promise of digital transformation.
The role of a digital strategy
Successful digital transformation starts with a well-defined digital strategy that provides Councils with a clear rationale and roadmap for adopting modern technologies and implementing new ways of working to meet business and community expectations.
“We’ve seen first-hand how a digital strategy empowers Councils to deliver better outcomes for business and community members by enhancing transparency, improving communication, and optimising operational efficiencies,” gwi.digital CEO Ian Roderick said. Gwi.digital are a firm specialising in digital transformation for local government and enterprise.
“It’s not just about adopting new tools; it’s about using technology to drive meaningful improvements in service delivery and customer engagement.”
Roderick emphasised that gwi.digital’s service offerings based on OrbusInfinity allow Councils to not only modernise their IT systems, but also develop a strategic framework for ongoing innovation.
“We help Councils transition from reactive, patchwork systems to proactive, streamlined environments that are future-ready,” he added.
Three pillars of digital transformation
Digital transformation for Councils involves addressing three distinct areas.
First are stable and sustainable ICT systems – cloud, software, networking, hardware, mobile – that directly support service delivery. If these foundational elements are not in place, then everything else at a higher level becomes harder to achieve.
Second is data management – or more specifically, thinking about data as an asset which unlocks other value. Councils handle vast amounts of data, so it is critical that they can correlate, integrate and share it to support decision making, and to treat it in accordance with prevailing legislation and regulation.
The final component is digital experience – what the end user, staff member, business, or community member sees as they interact with Council. There have been large and fast changes to users’ expectations, which have driven by their experience of private organisations, who have more resources and agility than Councils. Users now have higher expectations than they did before, and they know what organisations can do to meet their digital experience demands.
Peter White highlighted the importance of collaboration.
“Digital transformation isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, nor is it an ‘island of change in a sea of stability’ approach,” he said.
“Councils need to engage across departments and with a wide variety of stakeholders to define what is valuable and how to achieve it. Leveraging an integrated platform like OrbusInfinity, Councils can understand who will be impacted by change, how and when and resource accordingly.”
Roderick agrees. “To remain relevant and efficient in the digital age, Councils in Australia must embrace a proactive approach to technology adoption and evolution. This requires not only modernising IT systems, but also fostering a Council-wide culture of innovation and collaboration.”
The benefits of digital transformation go beyond operational IT improvements. “Technology isn’t just an operational tool; it’s a strategic enabler,” Roderick added. “A modernised Council is better equipped to handle challenges such as economic change, population growth, resource constraints, and environmental sustainability. We should all be excited about how technology can improve Councils and the people they serve – the most important community pillar in Australia.”
For more information on OrbusInfinity or gwi.digital’s work with Australian Councils, visit their websites at www.orbussoftware.com and www.gwi.digital
