Datacom scores first win for 'Datascape' gov ERP cloud

Datacom has deployed its new smart council and community cloud solution Datascape to the Shire of Manjimup in Western Australia.

The Shire is the first to adopt the cloud-based application, which Datacom has worked on for three years. Datascape helps simplify service delivery and improve community engagement for councils.

The Shire of Manjimup has gone live with the first stage of its Datascape implementation to handle service requests. Future evolution of the system will support the Shire's efforts to improve customer service, with upcoming stages include finance and rates payments, building and planning regulations, licenses, permits and animal control.

“The implementation was seamless and we’ve had a really positive response from our people using the new system,” Shire of Manjimup chief executive Andrew Campbell said.

“We chose Datascape because we were looking for something flexible, scalable and responsive that would support our growing community. We think it is the best solution to help us deepen community engagement, as well streamlining operations and service delivery.”

Campbell added that the Shire likes Datascape for being designed to accommodate a wide range of local government sizes, including small to medium sized councils.

“It’s scalable and allows local governments like us to choose what we need, then add more functionality as we go. It’s also cost effective as it’s priced per number of ratings assessments,” Campbell said.

As the service requests stage went live, Datacom migrated data across from Manjimup’s legacy system, including ratepayer and citizen contact details, land parcels within the district, property data, rates accounts, change of ownership processes and subdivision processes.

The rollout of the other stages of the Datascape project will continue throughout 2019.

“Working with the Shire of Manjimup has been great because they are both innovative and up for change, but also pragmatic – they know they can’t have it all on day one,” Datacom director for local government Mark Matijevic said.

“Andrew understood our vision for Datascape at a very early stage – with local government being first and foremost based on community needs – and so the Manjimup team has come on the journey with us as we’ve built. Their work on testing and validating our design has been invaluable, and it’s been a pleasure to have them as our very first Datascape customer.

“We describe Datascape as being ‘born in the cloud’ – this means that it has been built specifically for local government and is entirely cloud-based.”