Industry: Government | Product: Adobe LiveCycle ES, Avoka FormCenter
Red Tape Blueprints is a consortium of 41 Australian Local Councils, established to reduce the red tape burden on small business owners. With funding from the Australian Government's Regulation Reduction Incentive Fund (RRIF), participating councils piloted new ways to assist small businesses easily access and understand information and reduce the time and complexity of compliance processes.
Avoka was appointed to develop a set of Local SmartForms, a shared suite of interactive PDF forms that Council customers could complete, save, submit online and make online payments.
All Local Councils deal with local small businesses on a daily basis and accessing council services for these customers has often been a lengthy and complex process requiring visits to Council shop fronts.
The development of the Local SmartForms provides small business operators online access to a range of consistent Council forms relevant to their business needs.
“This is one of the best projects I’ve worked on in 35 years of Local Government.”
Barry Smith, General Manager - Hunters Hill Council, Member of the Local Government
For Avoka, this project had one key difference from others it has undertaken. Usually there is one client, with one set of challenges and one list of desired outcomes. But because the consortium is comprised of numerous Councils, many different requirements and points of view needed to be integrated into the solution.
Through a collaborative process, Avoka and the Councils identified a group of forms that could be improved, and which also had the potential to be shared by all Councils in the consortium, and beyond.
A comprehensive analysis and development process resulted in 42 existing forms in each Council refined to just 17 shared forms - an exceptional outcome which delivers significant efficiency improvements for both customers and Councils.
“With a tight timeline and an ambitious pilot program ahead of us, our Local Government consortium has found working with the Avoka team to be a highly effective partnership. They brought client-centered commitment and innovative thinking along with the professionalism and expertise that you would expect from an industry leader."
Greg Smith, (Chair, Reference Group) RRIF Red Tape Blueprints consortium; Director, Rockdale City Council
The Local SmartForms initiative provided a new approach to innovative public-private alliances with the launch of FormCentral, a hosted service developed by Avoka for Local Government.
FormCentral offers the councils a best business practice advantage with a shared services approach for the hosting of the Local SmartForms. In addition, the integration to existing payment gateways enables online transactions with the forms. This service is shared with other Councils so all current (and future) Local SmartForms are available to any Council to implement, with minimal setup and low ongoing costs.
