“Code for Australia stepping on board really demonstrated the art of the possible for us”- an interview with City Of Canterbury Bankstown
We sat down with Petrhyce Donovan, Manager of Digital Innovation and Smart Cities and Vivien Le, Innovation and Insight Officer at City of Canterbury Bankstown to talk about their Fellowship experience.
The City of Canterbury Bankstown have been investing in technology to improve the waste management services they deliver to their residents. This included adding GPS, cameras and AI to the fleet to track and monitor activity. With all this incredible data at the ready, Council engaged us for our Fellowship program, wherein we pair purpose-driven designers and developers with government innovators who are wanting to explore new ways of working using technology. Our team of three amazing Fellows (Maddie, Alex and Russ) were embedded into Council for a total of six months to build an application that was designed for members of multiple teams within Council and could utilise all that data while improving and unifying legacy systems. Outside of building the incredible tool, they also transferred a heap of knowledge to Council staff and built internal capabilities.
Read on to hear from Petrhyce and Vivien from City of Canterbury Bankstown Council on how their team was transformed.
What were your initial thoughts or expectations of Code for Australia and the Fellowship when we first started our engagement (prior to the Fellows starting)?
Vivien Le: I was super excited because it’s about supporting government in a way that isn’t taking advantage of government. Code for Australia understood the challenges that government has, and all the while supported people who are growing in the field with your Fellowship programme.
What has it been like to work with the Fellows?
Vivien Le: It’s been amazing. Russ and Alex are really knowledgeable — they’re great at active listening, critically thinking and then presenting ideas back to you in a reasoned manner. This ultimately meant they were great at breaking down the tech vs non-tech language barrier. Maddie is really good at the empathy-based work she does. As a unit they complement each other well and have their strengths so know where to play. I have no complaints about their character or their professionalism — they’ve just been outstanding people to work with.
“I noticed we didn’t have the depth of knowledge in house. It’s a massive risk to us that we can’t maintain that system, hence why we started to look at ways and systems to be able to transfer that knowledge. There was genuinely so much knowledge from the Fellows and we didn’t want to miss out on that opportunity.”
How did the Fellowship add value or contribute to your organisation?
Petrhyce Donovan: I cannot tell you the amount of people that have sought Viv, myself, or even James Carey, our Director out [about the project and how it was done] and how to replicate the impact. Our leadership team are looking at the way we’ve run this project to guide how we set future projects up.
Vivien Le: I think it added so much because fundamentally Councils and government don’t operate in the Agile way that other organisations do.
“[The Fellowship] demonstrated what we could be doing — what best practice looks like for lack of a better way of phrasing it. And what we can do if we get out of our own way.”
On the subject of Agile, are there any practices you’ll maintain?
Vivien Le: Yes, for sure. We’re planning to do retrospectives and daily stand ups as we found them critical to the process. The project is also informing some of the recruitment that we’re thinking about.
Can you talk to us about the knowledge sharing sessions? What were the outcomes?
Vivien Le: The Fellows did an absolutely superb job at building those tools, but also we realised that’s not the end of the journey. We needed the solution to be sustainable for the future. To do so, Council needed to know how it was built, how important decisions were made, and how to effectively keep it running in the future. The knowledge transfer was so critical in ensuring that the solution we got at the end of the engagement wasn’t a black box. That we knew the intricacies of it, and that we could pick it up and continue to run with i
Watching Loop develop from problem, to idea, to design, to application really reinforced the importance of knowing your context and constraints, focusing on user-centred design, and understanding the flow-on effect of decisions. Beyond just handover purposes, the sharing of technical knowledge introduced CBCity to new technologies, skills, and ways of working that are becoming increasingly important and pervasive in government.
Petrhyce Donovan: If I had to bottom line it, it’s about sustainability of outcomes. I deliberately set the project up in a way that collaboration, accountability, ownership and capability uplift were built into that the crucial moment when Code for Australia pass the baton, we can finish the race.
What would you say to someone who was thinking about potentially working with Code for Australia?
Vivien Le: Do it! Code for Australia feels like a breath of fresh air in the way that you work; it makes Council rethink a lot of things about what we do and how we can do it better. Also, you guys are just efficient — you get stuff done!
Petrhyce Donovan: You’re not hiring [a multinational consulting firm], you’re not hiring a little boutique agency that’s going to take a massive cut and profit. Code for Australia are actually coming at it from an altruistic place and serving communities. And then in turn, also serving the Australian community and lifting up the capability and standard nationally.
The City of Canterbury Bankstown Fellows recently gave a presentation on this project which you can view here. You can also leave us a comment or question in the comments or via Typeform, or reach out to us here, and we’ll be happy to answer all your burning questions!
