Tech award for Council

By Lachlan Ellis

Moorabool Shire Council has won a major award at a Victorian local government awards contest, being acknowledged for a new document management system.

Council took out the award in the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) Technology 2022 Awards for Excellence ‘Collaboration or Partnership’ category, for its ‘2020/21 Project X (naming conventions) – Moorabool, A Metadata Journey’ project.

Project X complemented Council’s transition to the new Sharepoint document management system, introducing new naming conventions to improve retrieval of information in an engaging and creative way.

Council was also highly commended in the Employee Experience category for introducing Project X, and was one of three nominees for MAV Technology’s People’s Choice Award, though this went to Banyule City Council’s IoT Smart Cities Asset Management system.

Moorabool Shire Council CEO Derek Madden said winning the award was a fantastic accomplishment for Council, and a great acknowledgement of the hard work put in by Council staff.

“Moorabool Shire was one of only two councils in regional and rural Victoria to make the finals of the MAV Technology awards,” Mr Madden said.

“It’s great recognition of the staff, and of their innovation and dedication in ensuring the organisation operates in the most efficient and effective way.”

MAV Technology’s Chair, Justine Resta, said the awards were a great chance to acknowledge technological innovation by councils across Victoria.

“The range of programs and platforms being created by local councils now starting to shift towards our customer needs over our internal requirements” Ms Resta said.

“Our communities face modern problems, and they require modern solutions. I hope examples like Moorabool, Kingston, Hume City, Glenelg, and Casey City serve to motivate the entire local government sector on the possibilities when we embrace technological solutions.”

MAV President Cr David Clark said those working in the technology space for local government sometimes miss out on the recognition they deserve, and the MAV Technology Awards for Excellence were one way of rectifying that.

Project X was a way of making Council’s internal record-keeping more efficient, but will also provide a benefit to the community, as better record-keeping enables Council to store and find information the community might be seeking more easily.