Images of devastated property are becoming an increasing feature of news outlets in communities across the country.
Uprooted trees on buildings, carparks with rows of battered vehicles, smashed windows, flooded local shops and homes–even loss of life is increasingly common.
Last month, it was NSW and southern Queensland battered by severe hail and thunderstorms through northern parts of Melbourne and what was described as the most significant storm event on record in Port Pirie in South Australia.
In Sydney and the Central Coast, the hottest October on record was punctuated by sudden and record-breaking wind, rain and hail.
All over Australia, what were once one in 50-year weather events – or even the type of event usually associated with in the tropic – have become more and morefrequent.
Fortunately, technology has progressed as climate uncertainty has increased. It is now possible, for example, to have such a detailed and granular view of all the assets and infrastructure in a community that the individual trees at highest risk of falling can be identified in minutes after a storm warning.
And, furthermore, to get individual messages to the residents most likely to be affected.
So why is not every council doing this?
Firstly, budgets are desperately tight. An aging community putting pressure on the cost of services and rate capping constraining revenue have them in a fiscal pincer.
Secondly, the cost of keeping alive the old, legacy technology running their operations is growing more and more, and delivering less and less of the services residents have a right to now expect.
Some, however, are showing there is a path through.
Central Coast Council in NSW recently partnered with Australian tech giant TechnologyOne to completely replace business systems it had relied on for more than 20 years.
The new systems will not only deliver huge internal operational savings – automating processes that today take hours of council staff time – it will support the citizen focused services that communities increasingly will not be able to do without.
But the icing on the cake is that the Council will pay less for the technology than it is presently paying for its outdated and inadequate mishmash of overseas software products.
Not just save a small amount – it believes it will save $2.4 million of precious ratepayers’ money.
The combination of TechnologyOne’s unique pricing model, which does not charge separately for implementation – the heart of the tech wreck horror stories councils so desperately need to avoid –and the reality that system modernisation can save money from day one, is changing the game for councils considering digital transformation.
And not a moment too soon for residents.
