The leadership team within Council has numerous responsibilities, with local government services covering a vast array of areas across their communities. From infrastructure, community services, health services, building services, planning and development, administration of facilities, cultural facilities to services such as water, sewerage and waste.
Council Leaders
Why Mandalay?
For Mayors, Councillors, CEO & General Managers
As a Council Leader, what kind of challenges do you face in relation to the waste collection and management services delivered to your community?
Infrastructure Planning
For leaders in local government, one of the most challenging responsibilities is planning, delivering, and maintaining infrastructure. Without accurate and relevant data, the delivery of these services can fall short of community requirements. Examples across the waste services delivered by council include:
- Residential and commercial waste production: What are the volumes and types of waste being generated across these sectors?
- A detailed understanding of facilities within your region (both within your LGA and neighbouring regions): What are the capacities of these facilities and how close to those capacities are they?
- Waste vouchers and bulk waste pick up: Are these services being delivered to your community, at what cost, and who is using them and who is not?
Without real data, a clear understanding across these areas are met with guesswork at best.
Access to detailed information
Knowledge built from current, accurate and relevant data captured across the waste services delivered to your community will aid in infrastructure planning.
Access to this data can be facilitated via facility management software that not only captures data but also presents data in near real-time dashboards and reporting.
Community
Local governments lead their communities by understanding their needs and directing resources to best meet those needs. Because of the public service nature of the role, the management of risk, customer service and community benefits are a delicate balance. The responsibilities of compliance with national and state legislation and protecting the council’s reputation makes the task even more demanding.
Balancing risk, customer service & community benefits
- Waste entitlements for Residents: Councils offer residents waste entitlements. This is seen as a resident or ratepayer benefit and reduces dumping which can be an expensive cost to council.
- Waste entitlements for Community Organisations: Community organisations help build an effective community. Helping this group through issuing waste entitlements is just one way that local government can contribute to their success.
- Compliance: With levy payments for landfill and other state and national regulatory compliance requirements, accurate measurement, reporting and planning can have a real impact on Council finances.
- Reputation: With the broad range of responsibilities within local government, data is crucial to reduce risk and minimises situations where council is caught unaware of community issues and the resulting reputational impact.
Operational Challenges
Local Government leadership ensures that the community operates efficiently and effectively. However, there are considerable risks involved across all aspects of local government operations, and your waste services are not immune.
Reducing risk
Through the use of technology to capture data, a detailed understanding of operational activity can be achieved, and areas of risk identified and reduced.
- Fraud: Across the waste industry, it is estimated that fraudulent activity is present within 97% of organisations. From commercial operators using resident waste vouchers (in some cases as much as $80,000 over 3 months) to customers, suppliers, staff or contractors through deception or incorrectly recording chargeable or revenue-generating items (data source: waste 2019 conference).
- Security: The security of information across council is an area of increasing challenge and focus and the waste industry is not spared from such security risks. Data security compliance such as GDPR and maintaining secure account information should be key areas of focus.
- Project management: Often new technology changes how organisations operate, and new features may be involved that waste teams and Councils have not come across before. By working with a seasoned project manager, everyone involved can focus on their parts to deliver the best possible solution for the organisation.
- Change management: Ensuring the successful delivery of new technology through a review of business processes and ensuring staff is trained.
Contact Us
Contact the team at Mandalay for more information about measuring and reporting on the data being captured across your community’s waste services.
Additional Resources
Tips on Waste for Council Leaders
- Listen to your Waste Leadership Team
- Offer personalised services
- View waste as an opportunity not a liability.
Don't Waste Money by Wasting Data
The Australian waste and resource recovery industry currently accounts for over $50 billion in the Australian economy per year.
Types of Fraud in Waste
Senior Consultant Lacey Webb discusses the most common types of fraud that are perpetrated in the waste management sector.
Leaders in data collection, information control and management.
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