The recently elected Douglas Shire Council representatives are among local councils around the state ready to use advances in technology to boost productivity and improve the way they serve their communities.

An in-depth survey of the digital productivity landscape among local councils, commissioned by the Local Government Association of Queensland, found that the overwhelming majority of councils are keen to use advances in information technology to improve productivity, efficiency and performance.

“An advantage of establishing the new Douglas Council is that we can start afresh with new technology as opposed to using Cairns Regional Council’s older, existing applications,” said CRC Division 10 Councillor and DSC Mayor-elect Julia Leu.

“We have already installed Civica authority suite [planning and development management software designed specifically for local government], so this is a marvellous opportunity to select the best tools for our particular circumstances.

“Although we have to pay for the start-up costs of our new IT system, in the long term we will be more advanced, have greater efficiency gains in staff time, and lower running costs by adopting best practice processes.”

“As a council we are all agreed that we will do our best to keep the public informed of our decisions, and how they are made, as fully as possible,” said DSC Councillor-elect Abigail Noli.

“It is important to us that as many people as possible have a chance to understand what is happening and why. Digital media will be an important process and part of spreading the word of what the council is up to and the processes it is taking," she said.

LGAQ President Margaret de Wit said the results of the survey presented the Association with an opportunity to boost understanding among councils about the potential of digital technology to transform the way they did business, particularly in rural and regional areas.

“Software providers used by local governments are at the leading edge in terms of guiding the Local Government Industry into embracing the digital age,” said DSC Councillor-elect Terry Melchert.

“Although [DSC] Councillors-elect have not been provided with details of the software for Douglas, I have used software in another local government and found it to be user friendly and having significant capability in terms of direct job site data uptake.

“I am also aware Council officers are reviewing iPad applications, which will facilitate the interface with our new, ‘Cloud’-based software by allowing direct data uptake from a job site. For example, road maintenance workers will be able to record the works completed on job orders as they work through the day so there will be no paper work to be completed at the end of the work day.

“With the tight financial constraints under which Douglas will have to work in the future, our financial viability will be very dependent on taking up these kinds of efficiency measures," he said.

The survey examined council attitudes to factors such as social media, the National Broadband Network and digital skills.

The findings that while 92 percent of councils wanted to introduce new technology as a means of providing better services, only 27 percent had the tools in place to set targets and measure performance.