Back in 2016 one of the most powerful messages we heard came from Jonathon Throssell, a former WA State President of the Local Government Professionals Australia. In his President’s Welcome at the 2016 Conference he said: We’re asked to “do more with less”; to reduce expenditure, but not services; to find efficiencies, yet take on more compliance responsibilities. Unfortunately, although everyone knows this to be true, not a lot seems to have changed in the last 3 years.
For several years Zoodata has had the pleasure of meeting hundreds of local government staff dedicated to keeping our community safe. Field staff are under resourced, time poor and struggling to keep up with their work load. Unfortunately, they have no control over budgets, particularly in smaller organisations, where budgets are passed by elected officials. The latter often have no idea of difficulties faced by field staff, and don’t realize inspections are being done inefficiently with a pen and clipboard. Processing these inspections can be especially time consuming, include a lot of double handling, and are potentially risky if paperwork is misplaced.
It never fails to astound us how LG inspectors continue to be passionate about their jobs. Having met, and accompanied these people, when doing their jobs, we have heard some hair curling stories including:
An irate school parent deliberately reversing into a ranger issuing a parking infringement..
A ratepayer whose house was one of 75 houses lost in a bushfire challenged her outer metro council in court claiming no firebreak inspection had been conducted on her property. Evidentiary paperwork had been lost or misfiled and never found.
Over $200,000 costs passed on to rate payers in prosecution and clean up of three separate environmental health inspections – including a lady hoarding over 70 cats on one property.
Not only are these situations undesirable, isn’t it potentially dangerous for our communities and especially for staff members?
Instead of an apple a day keeping the doctor away, wouldn’t it be preferable for qualified inspectors to be able to use an efficient and reliable software platform to:
Prove they have done their job properly
Prove they are keeping us safe
Preventing court challenges
and more importantly ensure a coroner does not have cause to asking questions about compliance regimes?
I once had to explain to a Scot what a sticky beak was, a role we undertake with pride. We make it our business to learn how local governments keep us safe. Effective communication channels between end users and software developers not only informs our software development, but the trusted relationships we create with clients are vital to creating an efficient and easy to use software platform. Inspect was collaboratively created and tested with a range of end users, including rangers, environmental health and building staff. We also make it our business, whenever the opportunity arises, to educate our fellow ratepayers about how their rates are spent. Like you, we know LGs are much more than rubbish and roads!
Because Inspect is highly configurable by your staff, it can be used for any type of inspection, auditing or monitoring activity, at no extra cost, and will drastically reduce inspection processing times – in some cases by up to 80%. This year one of WA’s largest municipalities is using Inspect to conduct firebreak inspections for the first time. We were delighted to hear 5 rangers had completed 1090 inspections in 1.5 days. One of our mid-sized LG clients does the same with 1 ranger, conducting an initial inspection of over 13,000 properties, then two follow up inspections – all within the three-month season.
Previously with pen and checklist it took 10 minutes to conduct and process each firebreak inspection, and now takes approximately 2 minutes. Multiply these savings across other inspections conducted by Rangers, Emergency Services, Environmental Health, Parks and Gardens, and Engineering staff etc and imagine how much time will be saved! Imagine what else you could do to with this saved time.
If your organisation needs to ‘do more with less’ resources Zoodata can help - contact us:
Phone: (08) 9485 0725
Email: info@zoodata.com.au
Zoodata knows how our rates are spent and know we are getting great value for money.
We thank all in local government for the work you do.