Efficiency and Community Engagement Drive Online Mapping for Burwood Council

Burwood Council – Conveying information with online services

Today, government bodies around the world are reliant upon interactive technology to operate efficiently, to improve the services they provide, and to meet the growing expectations of their residents. Burwood Council, like all local councils, oversees the many facets of local government for approximately 38,000 mobile residents who require easy-to-use online services to gather a wide range of information. A longstanding client, the council turned to Precisely to help build public maps and a self-service website – and ultimately, generate more engagement among the community.

With a desire to increase community engagement, the council was looking to utilise public mapping to better convey who it was and display general information – such as locations for bicycle paths, parks with dog off-leash areas, and parking stations. The council’s goals were to make information easily accessible, provide superior service to its residents, and reduce the amount of calls to the call centre. The council required an efficient solution that would be securely hosted online and managed by an outside vendor.

“We have about 11,000 rateable properties in our area, so a lot of time is spent dealing with the people who live in the area”, says the Burwood Council GIS Coordinator. “From our parking and enforcement people who manage their areas to our engineers who focus on foot paths and road upgrades, there are many departments that rely on our corporate GIS. The council needed the geographic information to support the various departments, projects and activities that it handles on a daily basis”.

A Precisely customer for more than 10 years, the council chose to enter into Precisely Local Government Enterprise Program (LGEP). The program provides local governments with access to its suite of geospatial tools for an affordable annual fee. LGEP offers more products and solutions and includes a technology platform that is used worldwide. The integrated solution packages together MapInfo Pro and Spectrum Spatial software. Because the annual fee is based upon the number of rateable parcels within a local government authority, both small councils and larger ones can gain access to the same enterprise solution.