New Zealand Councils get free access to process library

Starting next month, local government councils can access a new online library that allows them to share knowledge and experience with their counterparts across New Zealand.

The Local Government Shared Process Library NZ consists of around 1000 processes developed by councils and uploaded to the cloud for sharing.

The library is supported by business process management software provider, Promapp, and includes processes for activities where there is high public interest such as building consents, resource consents, wastewater management, environmental health and environmental monitoring and liquor licensing. The library also includes an extensive set of processes for dealing with land information, parking, libraries and museums, recreation and leisure, community development, animal management and compliance as well as customer services and service delivery.

“Anyone with a council email address will be able to access the Local Government Shared Process Library NZ,” says Ivan Seselj, co-founder of Promapp.“Taken together these processes represent the results of many thousands of hours of analysis, documentation and review. Councils will be able to use the library to gain detailed insights into the way other councils operate and improve their own processes, performance and customer service.”

The processes in the library were developed by councils using Promapp software.

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“We were happy to share our entire building consent authority quality assurance process with other councils,” says Jamie Dale of Taupo District Council. “We’ve invested heavily in trying to keep it simple and effective, which allows us to focus on delivering building control services to our customers.”

He says the International Accreditation New Zealand has reviewed the complete process and accredited it as meeting the requirements of the Building (Accreditation of Building Consent Authorities) Regulations 2006. Local government has a remarkable history of co-operation. Sharing proven, valuable resources is a natural extension of that culture.”

Council staff can use the library to search for and view processes in map and procedure form, print, share, download and deploy them. They can assess the quality of their existing processes against other councils’. They can find, adapt and adopt proven processes faster, saving time and money. And if their council already uses Promapp they can export the process and import it into their own Promapp system, improving efficiency and service.

“Councils are today under significant pressure to do more with less, to operate efficiently and deliver good service on a lower cost base,” says Seselj. “They are accountable, and their costs and performance are under scrutiny as never before.

“Our software allows New Zealand councils to spend a few minutes browsing processes that have already been created by other councils, instead of spending hours creating one from scratch.”

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