Policy ID No: DCS38- CL

IT STRATEGY 2016-2019

This strategy is applicable to all Moreland City Council employees

DOCUMENT CONTROL

Responsible service unit: Endorsed by: Version:

IT Branch Director Corporate Services 1.0
Contact position: Date endorsed: TRIM Record Number:
Chief Information Officer 8 June 2016 D16/55353
Contact name: Review date: Status:
Hans Wolf June 2019 Current
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Moreland City Council’s IT Capability allows Council to fulfil its legislative obligations including
the delivering of client services, data security and retention, performance reporting and
meeting financial management requirements.
Each month, more than 700 staff and councillors and over 10,000 unique members of the
Moreland Community transact with Council via an IT provided system. A further 70,000+
visited our websites seeking information on Council Services. This use of IT systems is
projected to continue to increase year on year for the foreseeable future.
IT is used to facilitate day to day transactions with the community from paying rates, reporting
issues to checking out a book as well as brokering information and knowledge between areas
of the council to assist indirectly in the delivery of quality services to the community.
In order to deliver appropriate and well aligned services, the IT team is required to understand
what and how each of the disparate functional teams delivers services.
In a rate capping environment, existing models and funding arrangements are not sustainable.
Technology enabled work practice reform will be the new norm for the foreseeable future.
Research indicates the following key trends:
 Mobility, whereby technology enables staff to work from anywhere at anytime.
 Cloud Computing, whereby IT applications and data are housed outside of Council’s
network
 Social Technologies, whereby technology enables community input eg Council’s Facebook
page
 Big Data, whereby information is captured, stored and analysed to support decision
making
 Internet of Things (IoT), whereby technology enabled assets/devices/sensors collect data
all on manner of things to enable better decision making and transforming how services
are delivered. Eg A rubbish bin with a sensor that advises Council when it is getting full as
opposed to Council using resources to check that bin every day in case it is full.
 Augmented and Virtual Reality, whereby technology enables immersive experiences and
perspectives that may be able to be utilised for building and planning proposals
The IT strategy addresses these items except for Augmented and Virtual Reality technology
as, at the time of writing, it is too early to confidently predict which brands and models Council
should pursue.

Guiding Principle
Council does not need to use IT to obtain a competitive advantage, therefore there is no need
to differentiate IT systems used from others, and therefore there is no need for custom
development of applications or to customise any off the shelf applications.
As a result, Council should attempt to ‘commoditise’ IT services to obtain 80/20 fit for as little
cost as possible and focus on Return on Investment.
Council should focus on consuming standard software applications for each of its vertical
markets or where possible attempt to combine vertical markets to achieve cost savings.

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Vision for IT for both internal and external customers
 Every transaction will be able to be undertaken online from anywhere, at anytime on any
device
 Every transaction will have been genuinely improved to make it easy for the customer
 All transactions are secure, reliable and low cost
 Every investment in technology is executed well to maximise and deliver valuable benefits
 Investment in IT will contribute actively to cost reduction across the organisation
 The focus of IT services is to support customers to achieve their goals more efficiently

About the Strategy

This strategy is not a project plan, it does not include a comprehensive list of computer
hardware, software, or specific solutions, but rather provides a direction to inform and shape
how Council acquires, consumes and deploys technology with a longer term goal of ensuring
our systems are current, secure and upgradable in line with industry norms, and represent the
best use of public funds.
Items outlined in this strategy, will be managed and oversight provided through the annual
Service Unit Planning process and more specifically through business cases, project plans
and project governance boards created for each initiative.
The Strategy builds on industry best practices and positions Council as a ‘secure fast follower’
in the deployment of technology. We recognize that Council shares a number of similar
challenges to both public and private sector firms:
 How can we enable our customers and employees to work more efficiently and also
deliver greater customer value? 
 How can we work collaboratively, both internally and externally, without compromising
data security or client confidentiality?
 How do we make our budgets go further and deliver more with less?
The overarching theme for the IT Strategy is to:
 Transition Applications from ‘on premise’ to ‘cloud’ to enable cost savings and reduce IT
environment complexities and enable mobility.
 To generate IT capacity to focus on better customer experiences and to introduce enablers
for emerging technologies such as the ‘Internet of Things’ that are set to have a large
impact on Council operations into the future.

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The following diagram shows the IT environment at Council as at June 2016:

Maternal & Child Health

Finance, HR and Payroll

Planning and Building

Library Management
Office Productivity

Compliance
Aged Care

ETC͙ ͙ ..
GIS

Records Management
At present, there are well over 100 different IT applications that support the work of Council.
This mirrors the highly disparate vertical markets Council participates in (eg library, planning,
aged care, road maintenance to name a few). The Victorian Government has for many years
prioritised buying IT applications instead of building your own as a cost saving measure.
While Moreland complies with this principal, it means that each of these applications are
provided by different vendors and each has a different way of presenting information and
reporting.
The following diagram shows the intended state at the end of this 3 year IT Strategy.
Mobile access to Council’s IT applications will be standard.
An Integration tool will be introduced to extract information from each of the disparate vertical
IT applications and provide a single way of presenting the information specifically so that the
community can easily interact with Council in a consistent way regardless of the underpinning
IT Application and how it presents data currently.
This Integration tool also allows Council to extract information from each disparate IT
application so that a common way of reporting can be achieved across multiple IT
applications. This will allow for a single report to show information that may come from
multiple IT applications via what is known as a ‘Data Warehouse’.
This Data Warehouse is expected to be vital for storing that significant amounts of data that
will be generated by sensors as part of future ‘Internet of Things’ initiatives.

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 Presentation and Authentication
MOBILITY INTEGRATION

Maternal & Child Health

Finance, HR and Payroll

Planning and Building

Library Management
Office Productivity

Compliance
Aged Care

ETC͙ ͙ ..
INTEGRATION

Records Management

Data Warehouse
GIS Reporting

Key Actions in IT Strategy

Key Actions Future State Current State Timeframe
Mobility First All equipment and systems will be selected Equipment is July 2016 to June
and implemented with a mobile first mindset primarily selected 2019 with each
to enable greater flexibility to management and implemented annual PC refresh
and MCC workforce. Mobile will be the for use in a MCC
default. Existing budget used to annually office with
purchase desktop PC’s and companion companion iPads
tablets will instead be used to purchase purchased on
Win10 based laptops/hybrids request.

Improved and Introduction of modern IT Applications IT applications are Dec 2016 to June
sustainable IT allows for reduced effort from business all traditional on 2019. After
performance module owners as well as IT staff and premise license modern
infrastructure. MCC will default to Software models (due to 10 applications are
as a Service for all new applications. IT will year support bedded down.
introduce an Assurance process to ensure contract recently This will begin to
compliance with security and legislative expired) that free up time
needs. The first application to be replaced require module
(year 1) will be the Finance Management owners to
System. configure and test
and IT to manage
infrastructure to
host applications

Key Actions Future State Current State Timeframe

Productivity Introduction of modern IT applications and Data entry into Dec 2016 to June
and customer mobile computing devices will allow staff to MCC systems 2019
outcome access information whenever and where needs to take

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Key Actions Future State Current State Timeframe
improvements they need it allowing for staff productivity place at a MCC
improvements and allowing for staff to office. Any
provide more timely outcomes to customers outreach requires
duplicate effort to
capture
information (on
paper) and then
complete data
entry when back
at the office. 

Reduced IT Moving Applications to Software as a All applications July 2016 to June

Cost Service (SaaS) will save... are installed on 2019
licensing costs MCC operated Major applications
Infrastructure costs infrastructure and allowing greater
MCC staff and IT savings will be
IT and Application owner time spent testing
are required to tackled from
and upgrading applications
test applications 2016/17.
Savings will be used for investment in and manage the
Integration and Data Warehouse upgrade of
applications
periodically

Better Introduction of a Data Warehouse will allow Staff are required June 2019. The
informed  reporting (GIS and standard) from a single to be in a MCC data warehouse
decisions  source across multiple systems. It will be the office connected will need
single trusted source for evidence based to our existing resourcing. This
decision making and an enabler for future network to access capacity does not
sensor generated (‘Internet of Things’) data most MCC exist at present. It
to be reported on. MCC will ultimately have systems and is expected that
more data being generated by information. No improved IT
equipment/sensors (ie PODS) than by staff. overall reporting performance from
This data will be used to determine where capability exists. SaaS based
MCC resources should be applied into the applications will
future   Information is free up time
reported on from
numerous
disparate data
stores with no
overall perspective

Key Actions Future State Current State Timeframe

Sustainable An integration engine/bus will move data Numerous July 2016 to June

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Key Actions Future State Current State Timeframe
integration between applications to ensure information integrations exist 2018
is where it is needed. It will allow for between
applications to be upgraded without the applications using
need for full end to end testing. This different point to
integration layer will encompass all point methods
applications and will be the enabler for requiring
bringing together information from across significant support
MCC for customer consumption and effort to maintain.
interaction. Eg Any future Mobile Apps or Whenever an
Portals would use this integration layer. integrated
application is
upgraded it
causes a ripple of
numerous other
applications that
need to be tested
to ensure no
impact.

Single A single easy to use secure portal will eServices exist to July 2018 to June
Presentation enable customers to interact and collaborate process requests 2019
to customers with MCC staff, applications and data. This and payments
and staff would leverage integration and presentation Disparate Intranet
tools and Internet sites

Flexible work Public cloud SaaS supports flexible work Staff are confined July 2016 to June
practices practices for users by providing simple to working on 2019
browser based access anywhere anytime. MCC computers
This flexibility will challenge traditional staff connected to the
management and measurement as work MCC network
could/will be undertaken remotely away from available in MCC
supervision. offices. A VPN
This will also challenge OHS and support service is
areas to adopt different practices to enable available for
staff to work from many and varied locations remote working
upon request

Broad Deploy greater Wi Fi access to all MCC Currently staff by July 2016 to Dec
Network sites and support 4G or greater access default do not 2018
Access when away from the office access all MCC
resources from
Introduce Free public Wi Fi access to anywhere,
selected sites. Merge Library Wi Fi service anytime
into broader free Wi Fi
Public internet is
available in all
libraries only

Prepare for The free public Wi fi to also allow for Standalone POD June 2019

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Key Actions Future State Current State Timeframe
the future - sensors to send data to MCC. The sensors system uses
Internet of can range from reporting on people sensors in a
Things movement, asset use, car spaces, weather closed system.
etc. This data will be received into the data
warehouse and reports developed to enable
informed decision making. This data can
also be shared with community
On Demand Users including staff, customers and Customers have From July 2016 to
self service partners can request all services online access to limited June 2018
replacing the need for physical forms or information via the
attending physical locations. Forms will be website and
progressively worked through. partner
Online collaboration will be available organisations
between staff, customers and partners. have no access to
technology
resources

Conclusion  
Adoption of this IT strategy will result in a focus on cloud computing and mobile technology to
enable customers, staff and partners to collaborate and manage MCC information and
transactions better.
It will allow staff greater flexibility to deliver services from wherever and whenever best suits. 
It will deliver more for less as both cloud computing and mobile technologies are more cost
effective than traditional ICT implementations. 
It will assist with transforming existing work practices.
It will set MCC up for the Internet of Things and a future where more data and information is
shared with the community.

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