Case study: Councils head towards IT crossroads

Queenland’s local councils are in the midst of a series of amalgamation proposals which will see areas being run under unified council bodies. Earlier this year the Queensland Government’s Local Government Reform Commission announced that Redcliffe City Council would be amalgamated into the adjoining Pine Rivers and Caboolture shires to form the North Moreton Regional Council.

The move could create a potential opportunity to Brisbane based software-as-a-service provider Emantra. The firm has an ongoing managed service relationship with Redcliffe council, which could potentially extend into the newly formed and extended North Moreton Regional Council.

To trace the formation of the Emantra and Redcliffe affiliation you have to go back to last year when the council had to give its outdated email system a much needed overhaul. “We were approached by Redcliffe City Council close to a year ago for some suggestions on solving its email issues as it was using an end-of-life Lotus implementation,” said Ross Dewar, managing director of Emantra. “It was running it in-house, with reliability and spam issues, and users could not reliably connect while on the road.”

Dewar said Redcliffe City Council wanted a solution to take away risk and distraction, while being highly reliable.

“We proposed a hosted solution of Microsoft Exchange 2003 and we installed a dedicated infrastructure in our data centre, out of which we service our clients,” he said.

Redcliffe City Council went live with a hosted exchange email solution from Emantra which simplified access to email for all council users, reduced internal administration and support requirements, as well as eliminated any future capital expenditure requirements associated with the provision of email. Additionally, since implementing the hosted email solution there has been a reduction in the quantity of spam emails received by council employees.

A specialist developer was employed by the council to maintain the mail system, however Lotus Notes was becoming less compatible with packaged systems and the council had concerns about ongoing support issues. Additionally the system did not provide for email access outside the council building which meant a Virtual Private Network (VPN) was required for remote access, resulting in heavy technical support requirements.

Utilising hosted exchange means that council users requiring remote access to email are now able to quickly and easily access the system via a web browser, eliminating the need to authenticate through the VPN. This in turn has eliminated most of the technical support calls and has freed up council’s mail administrator to focus on the key role of business analysis. Another challenge under an internally-managed system was the high level of spam which was resulting in the mail administrator spending significant time creating customised rules to try and combat the spam. Emantra has incorporated an email filter from NetBoxBlue into the hosted exchange solution to address spam issues.

“Redcliffe Council gets 24/7 support, security patching, and complete back-up to add an extra layer of security,” said Dewar. “This is the first example of a local government in Queensland having their email fully managed and outsourced.”

Dewar said there are around 300 users on the email system and the council’s cost to have email has been reduced to around $1 a day.

“The service we provided includes BlackBerrys, an enterprise server, a private IP connection and a spam and virus content filter. Redcliffe has an email administrator who names email boxes and gives out passwords. It is all low-level stuff as all technical and support aspects we cover.”

Dewar said the council has a number of councillors with BlackBerrys, smart phones and PDAs, and the service is fully integrated with those mobile devices.

“The hosted service option is very attractive to any organisation which has disparate offices, and the service we provided to Redcliffe is also available to resellers. The Redcliffe project shows that people can be redeployed to work on other areas such as improving their website,” added Dewar. John Mulcahy, manager of information systems at Redcliffe City Council, said outsourcing email has offered a terrific benefit from a budget perspective.

“The response from utilising the filter has been overwhelming. Previously we were receiving between 30 to 50 spam or junk emails per person per day. By utilising the filter this has been reduced to around one to three spam emails per person per day. Employees are freed up to respond more quickly to our ratepayer enquiries rather than sifting through spam,” said Mulcahy.

Keith Pattinson, executive manager of information and services at Redcliffe City Council: “We are extremely happy as Emantra are the ones servicing our clients. We didn’t have a lot of in-house expertise and the integration needed to be done as smoothly as possible, and Emantra achieved that.”

Pattinson said the council has always had a small IT team of five people, and having one less service onsite makes a big difference. “Such a service is rare in local government, but once we heard about it we jumped on it,” he said.

Big decision
“The one issue is the amalgamation and what will happen next is a big decision,” said Pattinson. “It will be another 12 months before they get to the stage of figuring out what to do [with the amalgamation]. It is still very early stages.”

Pattinson said all councils involved in any amalgamations will have to consider their IT infrastructures. Dewar said: “When Redcliffe amalgamates we will see what happens. I think there is going to be a need for the merged councils to assess their communications systems. I would hope there is a good prospect of us extending our service to these councils. The more users that come on, the cheaper it is for everyone.

“I think this is a service other councils in Queensland would benefit from. Between now and March there are local elections and the last thing councils need is communications problems,” he added.

Local opposition
The next stage of the Emantra and Redcliffe relationship clearly hinges on the outcome of the future amalgamation with Pine Rivers and Caboolture Shire councils.

“In analysing the amalgamation options the council is strongly of the view that the amalgamation of Pine Rivers and Redcliffe would provide the best outcome for our respective communities,” said Ray Burton, chief executive officer of Pine Rivers.

Burton said a Pine Rivers-Redcliffe amalgamation would produce a new local government of 208,000 people, which would grow to 275,000 by 2026.

“The area can be serviced by 13 councillors, including the mayor and can achieve governance and management cost savings and other economies of scale which will benefit the ratepayers through improvements in service delivery,” he said. “It is an easy option to achieve and there will be minimal disruptions to business during the transition phase.”

Burton said it would take advantage of the strong community of interest links which already existed between Pine Rivers and Redcliffe supported by the road, proposed rail and water networks and the strong community and professional services, employment, recreation, education and commercial linkages.

“The geographic size of the new local government at 808 square kilometres can be well managed without reducing the standard of community representation through distance it would see one councillor per 17,500 people,” he said.

However residents down the road at Caboolture Shire gave a resounding thumbs down to the amalgamations proposal. Residents who took part in a voluntary survey voted overwhelmingly against plans to amalgamate their council with Pine Rivers Shire Council and Redcliffe City Council.

Results of a voluntary survey show more than 70 percent of residents who took part voted against plans to include Caboolture in the new super council, which will begin operations after the local government elections on 15 March next year.

Residents also voted overwhelmingly against the name North Moreton Regional Council which had been proposed in the Local Government Reform Commission’s recommendations.

Amalgamations across Queensland are linked to the government’s efforts to establish stronger councils to deal with Queensland’s growth. However they could provide a bumper payday for an IT support organisation with the capabilities to support such a large contract.

Emantra seems keen to secure the deal for the North Moreton Regional Council and with its foot already in the door at Redcliffe it can feel confident of its chances. The fact a hosted solution has been provided will only serve to strengthen Emantra’s case, with new and disparate users being added easily.

The Emantra and Redcliffe project from last year highlights two vital channel opportunities. The first centres on the opportunities in local government. Further amalgamations will create opportunities to integrate councils’ IT infrastructures. The second is the opportunity in hosted services. They may not be commonplace, but as awareness rises, so will adoption.

Technical details
The Emantra solution implemented at Redcliffe City Council

• Dedicated Microsoft Exchange 2003 servers 300 mailboxes
• 99.9 percent Service Level Agreement for server, application and connectivity
• NetBoxBlue email, spam, content and virus filtering
• Fully managed service including software licensing, 24/7 monitoring, 24/7 support, web-based control panel, immediate patching and daily back-up