The Challenge
Taupo District Council’s manual-based Land Information Memoranda (LIM) service was complicated and lengthy, at times taking more than 10 days to process. The council needed change and aimed high. It wanted a fully-automated solution that would deliver a 24/7 LIM service, with improved turnaround times.
The Solution
The council has to provide a broad range of services to ensure the wellbeing of its community, including offering services such as LIMs.
A LIM request previously involved staff manually extracting data from three separate systems. They had to take a request over the counter, which then resulted in an email being manually sent to key people for more information. The document then had to be manually compiled while waiting for input from relevant parties. This meant the time taken often exceeded the service level agreement period and generated complaints from customers.
Datacom’s deep knowledge of local government processes and systems, as well as our systems integration expertise ensured we would deliver on the project goals. We worked closely with four other vendors and many different areas of the organisation to roll out the project.
Our team created a service using the Sphere platform, which provides complex online services through configuration. This platform was tailored to the council’s unique needs and integration services were developed. We then assisted with a cultural shift as staff roles changed from creating the document to managing the quality of the data input. This automated process also had to satisfy data integrity issues.
The final solution resulted in the council being able to deliver a fully automated LIM process, along with two additional services which had not previously been available. Today, the council offers an Express (four hours, 24/7) and Urgent three to five-day LIM service. This is supported by a flexible online payment option, using Datacom’s payment gateway.
Datacom Sphere enables councils to easily share this platform and other online services reducing development and operational costs for those participating. As more councils continue to join the platform and more services are created, ratepayers will benefit from better service at a lower cost.
“Throughout this project we were impressed with Datacom’s ability to understand our complex internal processes and adjust the deliverables accordingly. In the end, Datacom delivered our needs but also added functionality and capability beyond our expectations while staying on budget and on time.”
Georgiana Johnson - Project Manager – Business Development, Taupo District Council