Council to use dedicated team to speed up digitisation project six years

THE approval of a dedicated team to digitise about 30,000 property files will help the Invercargill City Council to speed up the $3 million project by six years.

A report from council’s customer and environment manager Darren Edwards was presented to councillors yesterday at council’s Performance, Policy and Partnership committee meeting.

In the report it states the digitisation project began in December 2015 to improve council’s efficiency.

However, to date a small inhouse team had only digitised about 24% of those files.

‘‘At this current rate of progress it is estimated that it will be 2031 before all property files are digitised,’’ the report states.

Chairman Darren Ludlow said the reason for the slow progress might be the project was underresourced and methods for digitisation had changed since the beginning of the project.

Councillor Lesley Soper said she was pleased as the completion date of 2031, ‘‘seemed a very far away date’’.

Councillors approved the recommendation to establish a dedicated inhouse digitisation team to deliver the project within a threeyear timeframe.

During the meeting, the youth council also presented its annual report.

Member Ryan Frost said it was a successful year, but there were disruptions due to the Covid19 lockdown.

All members rated their council experience in a survey, giving a mean score of 7.7 out of 10, he said.

The 25 members described the experience as ‘‘enjoyable and productive’’ having discussed and given input on council’s issues, including the city block development, elections and annual plan.

Ryan told councillors that the youth council had already received 30 applications for next year and they were ‘‘hopeful’’ to develop and maintain a closer, collaborative relationship with councillors in the future.