As one of Australia’s fastest growing municipalities, Cardinia Shire Council has always been acutely aware of the need to provide the community with information on its operations.
“With as many as seven new families calling Cardinia Shire home each day, it’s imperative that the Council makes smart decisions about resourcing to ensure residents get access to the services they need. This means fast access to key information that improves planning,” says Stephen Whitehead, IT Business Systems Leader for Cardinia Shire’s Corporate Services division.
The municipal Council that serves 90,000 residents in the southeast side of Melbourne, is forecast to double by 2036. Responsibility lies with the Corporate Services division to support the Council’s efforts to provide residents with services ranging from pet registrations and fire inspections to rubbish collection and planning permits. The Corporate Services team wanted to automate more of its work, increasing the speed and accuracy of data sharing while improving public trust with greater transparency.
Adopting Microsoft’s Power BI has been integral in allowing the Corporate Services team achieve their goals, where data visualisation and analysis proves to be at the forefront of operational change. The user-friendly formats have allowed for greater interaction with data across the organisation, leading to easier, quicker identification of any data quality issues.
“Through our new approach, we have managed to cut our report development time by up to 90%.” Porshia Sidhu, Senior Business Planning and Performance Analyst, Corporate Services, Cardinia Shire Council says.
Staff productivity has further increased, with work focused on analysis and collaboration rather than pulling report findings together. “With the level of data visibility that we are designing, we are finding that the organisation is being very responsive to ensure there are no gaps in our data,” says Jo Battin, Senior Planning and Performance Analyst, Corporate Services, Cardinia Shire Council.
“We have people asking why their data isn’t in certain reports. This sort of interaction with the data is a real positive. It is the type of interaction that we have always aspired to, and Power BI has played a key role in our efforts to achieve this.” Battin says.
Want to know more about digital transformation for local government? Come along to Microsoft’s Local Government Discovery Day to see how small towns, cities, municipalities or entire regions progress their digital journey to better service their city and citizens.
Choose your city and register here. For more from Microsoft in Local Government, visit: https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/enterprise/government/state-and-local