Council officers we speak to tend to assume that any technology work means a procurement process, a business case and a nine month wait. Sometimes that is right. Often it is not, and the assumption costs more than the process would.

01 The procurement position, stated plainly

Under sections 108 and 109 of the Local Government Act 2020, every Victorian council must adopt its own procurement policy setting out its principles, processes and thresholds. The Act does not prescribe a state wide dollar figure above which a public tender is required. Councils set their own, within their policy.

Two practical consequences follow. First, your council’s thresholds are a published document, and it is worth reading before assuming what is possible. Second, thresholds differ between councils, so what a neighbouring council did is a guide to what is possible, not to what is permitted at yours.

None of this is an argument for avoiding procurement. It is an argument for sizing the first piece of work to what it actually needs, rather than bundling it into something large because large feels safer.

02 What is genuinely worth doing first

The work that repays effort in local government has a consistent shape: high volume, rules based, and administrative rather than discretionary.

Correspondence triage is usually the clearest example. A general enquiries inbox receives requests that belong to a dozen different teams, and someone reads and forwards all of them. Classification, routing and drafting an acknowledgement is well suited to a system, with an officer confirming anything unclear.

Others in the same category: checking permit and grant applications for completeness before they reach an assessing officer, so incomplete applications are returned in hours rather than weeks. Assembling agenda and minute packs from documents that already exist. Turning inspection notes into structured records. Converting public notices into plain language and other community languages, with human review before publication. Preparing tender and contract document sets from templates.

What these share is that a person still decides. The system removes the assembly, the reading, the routing and the retyping around the decision.

03 What should not be automated in a council

Anything that determines a resident’s rights, entitlements or obligations. Statutory decisions stay with the delegated officer, with reasons that officer can explain and stand behind. The failure modes here are well documented at other levels of government and there is no need for local government to rediscover them.

Records obligations are the other constraint that catches projects late. Public records requirements apply to what a system generates and to the decisions it supports. Any workflow needs to produce a record that satisfies your records manager, and that person should be in the room early rather than at sign off.

04 The sequence that works

One process. Measured before and after. Documented properly. Then a business case built on your own numbers rather than a vendor’s.

This sequence exists for a reason beyond caution. A council that has run one contained piece of work has something no procurement document can substitute for: evidence, from its own operation, about what the effort actually returns. That evidence is what makes the larger procurement straightforward when it comes.

The reverse order, a large procurement based on projected benefits, is how technology projects in the public sector acquire their reputation.

05 What to ask a supplier

Where does the data sit and who else touches it. How does this satisfy our records obligations. Who owns the workflow logic, us or you. What happens if we stop working with you. Can our own staff maintain this, and what does that take. Who is accountable when it produces a wrong output.

A supplier who has done this work in government will answer all six without hesitation. One who has not will treat them as obstacles.

If you are a council officer reading this

The most useful first conversation is not about technology. It is thirty minutes on which processes consume the most officer time for the least discretion. We are happy to have that conversation without a proposal attached to it. Start a conversation.

Related reading: Seven processes worth automating before you add more staff and what this work actually costs in Australia.

Frequently asked questions

Do Victorian councils have to run a tender for software?

Not automatically. Under the Local Government Act 2020 each council adopts its own procurement policy and sets its own thresholds, and the Act does not prescribe a state wide figure. Your council’s policy is a public document and is the authoritative answer for your organisation.

What can local government safely automate?

Administrative work with clear rules and no discretion: correspondence triage and routing, completeness checks on applications, document and agenda assembly, structuring inspection records, and translation or plain language drafting with human review. The test is whether a person still makes any decision that affects a resident.

Should AI be involved in council decision making?

Not in decisions affecting residents’ rights, entitlements or obligations. Those should remain with the delegated officer, with reasons that officer can give and defend. Systems can prepare, check, summarise and flag, which is where nearly all the available time saving actually sits.

How do smaller suppliers get on a council’s radar?

Most councils maintain an interested suppliers register and use an electronic tendering portal, both usually linked from the tenders page on the council website. Registering on both, and sending capability material directly to the relevant team, is the standard route and costs nothing.