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Hyperlinking Caboolture Shire Council staff

With the introduction of an Intranet, Queensland's Caboolture Shire Council has provided an up to date electronic information service. This is helping staff to improve their productivity by placing at their fingertips the information and services they need.

Quality Officer Janet Kirkwood said the Intranet was developed to ensure the accuracy, consistency and currency of Council documents which is not always possible to control when relying on printed information.

"Our vision was to develop an electronic QA system to educate new employees, to increase corporate communication, and enhance the corporate culture," she said.

"Intranets are centralised information systems that can be accessed internally by all employees.

"It also means we are able to add to the information we publish on a more immediate basis than if it were printed material, to make changes, and to grant and restrict access to information as needed."

In developing Council's Intranet, its Quality Assurance officers viewed some progressive sites developed in the private sector.

Using this information, they were able to devise a simple Intranet that met the organisation's needs, anddo it within three months.

"We solicited input from staff who were asked which functions available on an Intranet would make their jobs simpler, save time and money, help with job satisfaction, to be more productive and to promote our corporate image," Janet Kirkwood said.

Manager, Contracts and Quality Management, Sergio Santos, said "Our resources were limited to one project officer, Janet, and one software package.

"We used Microsoft FrontPage to create and manage the site. It was chosen because it is relatively user friendly and integrates easily with the other packages Council already uses."

A number of Council's key documents are already available through the intranet. These include minutes, policies, local laws, corporate plan, contracts manual, and hyperlinks take users to Council templates, forms and supporting documentation.

A further innovation is, instead of using a table of contents, the Intranet's site map has been designed based on Council's own corporate structure. This gives the user ready access to information on specific business units through their own, individual 'home page'.

Highlights of the Intranet's development program are that it is available to all staff who have access to a computer connected to Council's network. Contributions and changes, including Council's meeting minutes, policies and local laws, are available immediately.

Resources were limited but the Intranet is now published on two servers, and its popularity is such that it recorded 25,000 hits last year.

While the Intranet is up and running, its development is ongoing.

Plans for the future include a daily bulletin board which will publish significant information from each business unit, staff searching capabilities which will include staff profiles and contact details; and photographs of impounded animals.

Janet Kirkwood said that while the content of the Intranet is specific to Caboolture Shire Council, other Councils could well adopt its 'backbone'.

"As it is a live system, it is continuously being updated and allows for a large amount of information to be available to staff promptly," she said.

For further information contact Janet Kirkwood, telephone (07) 5420 0157.

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