By Gabriella Payne
All sorts of organisations, including local councils, are learning to adapt and transform in this digital age as the times keep on a changin’ – and our very own Cardinia Shire Council have been recognised for doing just that.
The Cardinia Shire Council have been chosen as one of the finalists in the 2021 Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) Technology Awards for Excellence – and are one of only ten Victorian councils to have done so.
These annual awards are held to recognise how local government councils are transforming and adapting so that they can continue to serve the community in the ever-changing digital era.
The MAV President, David Clark, said that the award finalists were all excellent candidates and reflected the hard work that councils were putting in to enable a cultural and technological shift, Australia wide.
“Across the sector, especially in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, councils have embraced digital solutions as a way to maintain high levels of community service in difficult circumstances,” Mr Clark said.
“These awards are an excellent opportunity to share key learnings, as well as congratulate those involved for their innovative thinking and cross-organisational collaboration to move these digital projects from conception to implementation,” he said.
The Cardinia Shire Council have been selected as a finalist in the ‘digital leadership achievement of the year’ category for their work on the ‘Cardinia M365 records transition’ project, and a council spokesperson said that they were thrilled to be in the running to win this prestigious award.
“We are so pleased to be a finalist in the 2021 MAV Technology Awards for Excellence, after the hard work and careful planning of our information services team, to transition our organisation to a new online document management system,” the spokesperson said.
“The project involved introducing a user-friendly system to capture all organisational records.
Shifting to this platform was one project in a series of bigger projects that helped enable easier remote working during the pandemic,” they explained.
“The project saw a very large number of documents transitioned from the old system to the new system, compliant record capture across key systems, a comprehensive training program for our entire workforce and more, which was delivered internally by our information services team.”
Other Victorian councils in the running are the Hobsons Bay City Council, Brimbank City Council, City of Boroondara, City of Casey, City of Greater Geelong, City of Melbourne, Melton City Council, Alpine Shire Council and Yarriambiack Shire Council.
The winners in each of the five categories will be announced at the MAV’s Awards for Excellence dinner on Thursday 29 April at Marvel Stadium, Melbourne and the winners will then be eligible for the Victorian and Australian Achievements of the Year.
