The Alpine Shire Council and the Sunshine Coast Council have jointly won a national award for their innovative approach to digital technology.
The two councils won the Australian Achievement of the Year category in the Municipal Association of Victoria’s Technology Awards for Excellence 2020 – Alpine with its “Project Pinnacle” and the Sunshine Coast for its Sunshine International Broadband Network (SCIBN).
Project Pinnacle brought together the Victorian rural councils of Alpine, Indigo, and Towong to identify a modern, cloud-based enterprise system that could be implemented across all three councils, while the SCIBN “will provide Australia’s fastest, most affordable international data connection to Asia from the east coast” via an international sub-sea data connection landing on the Sunshine Coast.
The Smart City Achievement of the Year award was won by the City of Whittlesea, Banyule City Council, Moreland City Council, Mitchell Shire Council and Nillumbik Shire Council for their “Northern Melbourne Smart Cities Network, Enabling data to drive change” project.
The awards recognise outstanding team and individual efforts in the use of technology to improve service delivery and efficiency to local government organisations or communities.
MAV President Coral Ross commended all finalists for their innovation, leadership and ground-breaking approaches.
“Technology improves service delivery by speeding up communications and increasing convenience, enabling councils to function more efficiently and effectively,” Cr Ross said.
“All finalists demonstrated that they had made advancements in technology that would provide better outcomes for councils and their communities.
MAV’s homepage has a full list of nominees as well as the projects and councils that were highly commended.
Entries for the 2021 Awards for Excellence are now open to all Australia councils; entries must be submitted by 31 December 2020.