Press Release
Innovative Tararua Switches to Civica’s Authority Solution
November 2, 2009
Tararua District Council, which has a strong reputation for technical innovation, has chosen to implement Civica’s Authority enterprise software application for local government.
The progressive Council is the first ACS user to make the switch since Civica acquired the local government business of Electionz.com in February 2009. Council will go live with Authority on July 1 next year.
Tararua’s high tech reputation was enhanced this year when the Dannevirke-based Council was a finalist in the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) 2009 Innovation Awards, for rolling out 168km of fibre optic network. This serves local business and the community as well as Council.
Peter Wimsett, Manager Strategy and Development, said Tararua chose to move to Civica’s Authority because: “We want to make productivity gains and do things well.” As well as the core applications, Tararua will use Authority’s HR & Payroll, Assets & Infrastructure Management (AIM), and Mobile Computing applications. Management are looking to open Council for business beyond 9am to 5pm office hours by giving residents and businesses online access for payments, requests and queries.
“Authority impressed us by being a full suite of integrated software with just about everything inside the box, which is unusual,” said Peter. “Civica is adding functionality continuously and it’s all built around a very solid looking relational database. Use of the latest technology such as SQL Server and Microsoft’s .NET programming model for building visually striking applications for mobile computing mean that Authority is a very solid platform indeed.”
According to Peter, Council had delayed moving to a new software platform for two years, owing to budgetary constraints, although management knew they would need to change from the current Oracle-based software system eventually. The go-live date of July 1, 2010 for implementing Authority was scheduled to give staff a reasonable period for “getting things right”.
He said: “We enjoy innovating, and were keen to become the first ACS user to move to Authority. The implementation period will allow us to do data cleansing where necessary, and we expect the move to a parcel-based land system to be especially productive. We have been looking to do that for many years but need to make sure our records can support the lowest level of land parcel data.”
Tararua will implement most of Authority’s modules on July 1, but will retain its current Assets system for a time, before adding the AIM module. Peter Wimsett says this will represent a massive learning curve for Assets staff as AIM is a fully integrated system. The existing system requires information to be downloaded into an Excel database for reporting.
“The Assets people are looking forward to having all the information in Authority, without having to drag it out manually,” said Peter.
This data extraction problem extends to other reporting areas too, and management are keen to use Authority’s reliable service requests system for performance reporting. “It will give us far more flexibility in automating our reporting,” says Peter.
He adds: “I like Civica’s research and development strategy. They are taking on a more strategic view of their development rather than a client response-only approach. By maintaining a core group of people in R&D, that wider scope will enable them to maintain their market-leading position.”
Tararua District, population 7,000, is a predominantly rural area suitable for sheep, cattle, and dairy farming. Its large area (424,000 hectares) includes several scattered small urban areas, and provides significant service delivery challenges. Over one-third of the workers are employed in agriculture. Smaller industries include food processing, industrial metal fabrication, textiles and retailing. The Tararua has the largest number of wind farms in New Zealand and a number of major projects planned, with consistently ideal wind for this form of renewable energy.
Installation of fibre began in the iconic township of Eketahuna, travelling across to Palmerston North and then north to Norsewood. As well as delivering inexpensive and fast Internet services, it enables Council to use a VoIP phone system, avoiding expensive toll charges.
The new fibre optic cable network has boosted service delivery initially lit at a gigabit per second between offices and 100 megabits per second for the internet. By using dark fibre for communications, Council is able to choose whatever speed its network infrastructure can handle, and started at 1Gb per second “because it’s cheap”. The fibre optic network also enables CCTV, affording high level protection to public areas. The local hospital was selected as site to trial X-ray swapping and other pilot initiatives like remote staff training, as a result of the network. Schools connected include Tararua College in Pahiatua that has just been selected as one of the first schools in NZ to have a network upgrade for ultrafast broadband.
Wireless ISPs are now rolling out services to the rural sector and towns using the backhaul. The Prime Minister also visited to look at “fibre to farms” where a farm acts as nodes for other farmers’ fibre. Shortly after, the Prime Minister committed $250m more for rural broadband. The Tararua is ready to take up this challenge.