For companies in the public sector landscape, transitioning into the new age of unified communication and digital transformation can be complex. This is particularly true for groups with years of investment in legacy technology and processes.
Accessing the best possible results often means working with a partner capable of adapting to suit your needs. Fortunately, companies like Microsoft offer not just a flexible ecosystem of tools for unified communication and collaboration but a wide variety of certified partners too. Companies like Information Leadership, Microsoft Gold Partners, and IT experts can work with Microsoft to deliver unique solutions to specific public sector problems.
For the Tasman District Council (TDC), the versatile solutions of the Microsoft ecosystem, paired with the guidance offered by Information Leadership, led to rapid and efficient digital transformation. Here’s how Microsoft, TDC, and Information Leadership worked together.
Creating a Strategy for Going Digital
Though small compared to some countries, New Zealand is diverse, with more than 75 named councils across the nation. Each council plays a crucial role in overseeing its area's resources, people, and infrastructure. These district councils are large, complex, and brimming with lots of staff to manage and strict regulatory requirements.
Tasman District Council is one of these crucial council groups responsible for performing the functions of both a city and regional council. This means the group is liable for dealing with various activities from sewerage systems to dog licensing. Each area of work requires large data sets governed by specific regulations.
Unfortunately, for some time, TDC has found itself struggling to deal with outdated processes, including paper-based data management, making it harder to keep track of important information. Even the workflows running digitally were based on an ageing system, making the council slow, unproductive, and often frustrated.
According to the CIO of TDC, Steve Manners, in some respects, the group describes itself as being 15 or 20 years behind other organisations.
The Tasman District Council finally decided it was time to make a change in 2020 and reached out to Microsoft Partner Information Leadership for help replacing an ageing environment. However, just as the project began, the country suddenly found itself in Level 4 lockdown, presenting a significant roadblock.
Only around 1 in 5 TDC employees had the tools required to work from home, making continued business extremely difficult. However, rather than putting the digital transformation process on hold, the TDC decided to move even faster toward its goal.
Implementing a New Solution At Speed
According to the Chief Executive of TDC, there was a huge temptation to say the timing wasn’t right when the pandemic began. However, the group believed this would have led to a considerable loss in momentum. Instead, the team decided to take the plunge and go all-in.
Information Leadership worked with TDC to develop four key solutions for streamlining business processes built through the Microsoft 365 stack. The first challenge was consolidating information in a way that boosted productivity and ensured compliance in a flexible workplace. The result was a new modern information system (known as DORIS) equipped to handle more than 750,000 documents.
Once the documents were moved into the Microsoft stack, employees could find the information they needed more rapidly and in one place. For instance, a digital property search in the new system allowed the group to locate all the content related to a single property, from animal control issues to building consents, in one view. The staff are now accessing 4,500 documents per day rather than sorting through paper records.
