The following is a session summary from the 2014 Local Government Research Forum held in Melbourne on 30 April 2014. This summary outlines the key issues that emerged through the paper presentations and subsequent participant discussion.

Session: Productive Communities. Facilitator: Dr Robyn Morris, Edith Cowan University

The Productive Communities session involved two presentations, one relating to local government's use of community indicators in Australia, and the other relating to the use of technology to enhance community engagement outcomes in building productive communities. Both presentations emphasised the importance of community engagement/participation in local government planning and decision-making. It provides a mechanism through which councils can enhance their understanding of community needs, concerns and aspirations; build their strategic capacity; and improve their efficiency. They also suggested that community indicators and technology embedded into community engagement processes are underutilised tools in the local government sector in Australia.

The first presentation by Catherine Hastings and Associate Professor Roberta Ryan on using community indicators questioned whether local governments in Australia are using this tool to the greatest effect, as most councils tend to employ community indicators for purely monitoring and benchmarking purposes. There is huge scope for utilising this tool as a means of educating the community, promoting discussion and enhancing community participation on important local issues, and building the democratic capacity of the community. The second presentation by Robyn Cochrane outlined how technological advances give local government access to new innovative approaches that provide opportunities for it to enhance the breadth and timeliness of its community engagement processes. This technology is also a valuable resource in that it enables local government to more efficiently and effectively store and manage the data collected. This not only makes the data readily available and accessible, but also enables councils to build longitudinal databases to help with future planning and decision making. Overall both presentations provided some insight to how local government might gain greater value from these useful tools and technologies to help build more productive communities. This simply requires a new way of thinking and a willingness to try new approaches and uses of the tools and technologies that are readily available.

The pursuing discussion explored the costs and time requirements associated with using technology embedded community engagement processes, what was involved, and the types of benefits derived. It also considered the capacity for smaller, more resource constrained councils to use these types of tools and technologies compared with larger urban councils.

Dr Robyn Morris is an Adjunct Academic at Edith Cowan University in WA. She has 21 years’ consulting experience in the private and public sectors with a focus on local government.

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