Dubbo Regional Council was proclaimed by the NSW Government on 12 May 2016 following the amalgamation of the former Dubbo City and Wellington councils. An Administrator and Interim General Manager were appointed to oversee the implementation of the new council through the NSW Local Government Election, held on 9 September 2016.

They say that breaking up is hard to do, but sometimes uniting things can be even harder, especially when this involves bringing together previously distinct and separate organisations - combining people, processes and platforms. More than 80 local government authorities across NSW faced this dilemma in 2016 following the state government mandate to force council amalgamations. Two regional councils combined as part of the sweep were the City of Dubbo and Wellington Council, located 50km apart on the fertile western plains of NSW. Both were fortunate to have many IT systems in common, but still faced the issue of having different software versions and data sets.

A key challenge in the project was to maintain linkages to the external dataset within the merged dataset. The merging of Council’s major business systems including the EDRMS was a key priority identified shortly after the amalgamation was announced. The main challenge was combining the two production datasets into a single dataset to achieve a ‘single source of truth.’

Information Proficiency has extensive local government experience and knowledge of both the TRIM product and Authority making us their first choice for this project. At the outset of the project, solutions provider Information Proficiency was engaged to provide assistance with Scoping, Design, Technical Implementation, Documentation and Training. External link data was migrated, and re-mapped in conjunction with the amalgamation of the two-target line of business systems. With the merged business systems bedded down, council could address the challenge of digital transformation.

• Harmonisation of the two Councils EDRMS to Content Manager 9.1.
• Consolidation of Councils former data centres in the former Dubbo facility.
• Standardised Operating Environment – Moved from traditional desktops to virtual desktops.
• Eliminating the duplication of licence fees.