April 1, 2010
Gwydir Shire Council in north-western NSW is anticipating working more efficiently, giving residents access via the Internet and having a failsafe disaster recovery setup after agreeing to implement Civica’s Authority enterprise software application.
In doing so, Gwydir becomes the first PCS software system customer in NSW to switch to Authority since PCS was acquired by Civica. Formed by the amalgamation of Bingara and Yallaroi Shire Councils in 2004, Gwydir selected PCS when the Shires merged, after Yallaroi had used it since 1999.
According to Gwydir’s Corporate Services Director, Ron Wood, Gwydir has been happy using PCS, but sees the switch to Authority delivering more functionality that will enable staff in a number of areas to work more efficiently.
He said: “Our people are looking forward to using Work Orders, and our Requests system will be enhanced. Being able to deploy across the Web, so that residents and ratepayers can pay their bills and make enquiries online, will be another good feature.
“Authority’s Asset Infrastructure Management (AIM) module will also enable staff to work smarter, as our present system essentially deals only with the financial side of assets.”
Ron is confident that the decision to rely on Civica’s resources for disaster recovery operations will prove worthwhile. The Shire’s full systems software and data is mirrored to Civica’s data centre at Sydney in real time, so if there is a server crash or other major system fault, no data will be lost.
“That’s a key feature”, said Ron. “If anything untoward happens to our system, all we will need to do is grab a PC, log into Civica’s site and away we go.”
Gwydir Shire Council will cut over to Authority in October or November 2010, with implementation planning beginning about six months earlier. Ron Wood has worked with Civica both at Gwydir and in his former position at Port Macquarie, and describes their people as “really helpful and friendly.”
Council operates from two main offices, at Warialda and Bingara, as well as several offsite locations. Warialda is the centre for Council's technical services functions, while Bingara is the centre for administration.
As a small rural council, Gwydir has a fairly static population of around 6,500. The region is mainly pastoral with some tourism that Council is helping to promote. The recently sealed road between Narrabri and Inverell has put Gwydir on the shortest route between Brisbane and Melbourne/Adelaide.
The Shire starts at the Nandewar Range north of Bells Mountain and continues north almost to the Queensland border, while to the east it is bounded by Inverell, Guyra and Uralla Shires, to the west by Moree Plains and Narrabri Shires and to the south by the Tamworth Regional area.
Gwydir Shire covers an area of 9,121.70 sq km. Both Warialda and Bingara have hospitals, aged care hostels, medical centres, caravan parks, swimming pools, pre-schools, libraries, tourist information centres. There is a mobile pre-school based at North Star. Other centres of population are at Warialda Rail, Gravesend, North Star, Croppa Creek, Coolatai and Upper Horton.