Media release
7 November 2013

Region shares in software excellence award

Horizons Regional Council’s role in a large-scale IT success story has been recognised with a national award for excellence.

The award is shared by Northland, Waikato, Taranaki, Horizons, West Coast and Southland Regional Councils who have worked together to develop and share specialist technical software required for core functions.

The Integrated Regional Information System (IRIS) is one of the largest local government shared-services project ever undertaken in New Zealand, and won the ‘Joined Up Local Government’ Excellence Award at this week’s Society of Local Government Managers annual meeting in Wellington.

Horizons chief executive Michael McCartney says the award supports the hard work being put in by all six councils to create a more seamless experience for ratepayers.

“IRIS consolidates data currently held by a number of satellite applications into a single database, aiding a more unified approach to council business. This is good news for our ratepayers and our staff.

“By working in partnership with the other councils we’ve been able to achieve far more than would have been possible at an individual level. This award supports the fact that we are moving in the right direction and provides a welcome boost for our hard-working team,” he says.

Around 200 staff from the six councils, along with 50 from contractor Datacom, have been involved in the complex project. The database alone is made up of hundreds of thousands of resource consents and other council records. IRIS is now live at two of the councils and about to go live at the other four.

Mr McCartney says each of the councils involved in the project were running core systems on software platforms that were no longer being supported. When they found no affordable package that met their needs, councils made the decision to work collaboratively which brought with it the opportunity to review and refine business practices.

“We now have a system built by us that works for us. It’s involved a great deal of cooperation between councils and we are confident IRIS will help Horizons provide the best service for our regional communities across all facets of our business,” he says.

Ownership and management of IRIS is vested in a company owned by the six Councils, and the way is open for other Regional Councils to join the project.

ENDS

© Scoop Media