5000 Pages
13 Nov 2013 09:33
Just ticked over the 5000 page mark today. Quite a few of the 5000 are minor pages, and redirects, but it adds up to quite a lot of useful content all the same.
October 2013 Site Update
31 Oct 2013 22:17
Quite a few milestones this month, with the number one milestone being the site's 5th birthday on October 13.
We also just cracked the 20,000 site visitors per month barrier this month, and we are up to 923,000 page views since the site was created.
There are now 762 site members and 161 content contributors.
May 2011 Site Update
02 Jun 2011 09:23
13 more people joined the site in May bringing the total to 390.
- Bruce Dalrymple
- Rob Petreski
- orrey3
- velvetsarah
- Janinem
- bjones88
- Daverk
- Haze4rob
- Joanne Lafranchi
- Jeff du Manoir
- Lowell Richardson
(account deleted)- HelenRooth
- Venkata Peteti
New Weekly Visitors Record
23 May 2011 20:46
There were 3,109 site visitors last week, which is a new record.
According to Google Analytics, since the site was set up their has been.
- 107,737 Visits
- 90,397 Absolute Unique Visitors
- 304,999 Pageviews
April 2011 Site Update
12 May 2011 02:56
12 new people joined the site in April 2011 bringing the total number to 376
- SLIS does not match any existing user name
- Matt Babaei
- Tim Cornford
- fblues
- (account deleted)
- Nagendra Shakya
- PhilMc
- methusela too
- Andrew V
- Michael Briggs
- Adrian Ellson
- Smick
The total number of site visitors was down slightly from March (probably because of the Easter holidays), but page views were up again with a site record 21,368 pages being viewed over the month.
Just updated the front page.
08 Apr 2011 03:15
We have just updated the site's front page, and are interested to hear what people think about the new look.
Site Update No.4 (2011)
04 Apr 2011 03:50
22 new people joined the site in March bringing the total to 365. Welcome to:
- JJRyan
- Gina Edwards
- Robbie Meerman
- NoelValenti
- VaughnCrowther
- Boeser
- Sara Morrison
- kathm
- Graham Proud
- Murali K G
- SueR
- Vincent Vincent
- Anton Juodvalkis
- cwhce5
- David K Robinson
- Terri Minards
- Burnesy
- Colin East
- SimonDugina
- Ben Steel
- DDanielsson
- shaun kelly
A further 96 pages were added to the site bringing the total number of pages to 3472.
Also special thanks this month to Danielle Danielsson who has volunteered to be a site administrator and has been busily adding site content, and firing up the forum.
FOSS Update
11 Mar 2011 22:24
The Local Government & Municipal Knowledge Base is a big believer in Free & Open Source Software (FOSS), so it great to hear there is some action happening in South Australia on the FOSS front.
Geospatial ICT Solutions is working with City of Holdfast Bay and the Eastern Regional Alliance on a suite of FOSS products for local government. It is early stages yet, but if successful it could be a really big deal for Local Government in the medium term.
An Open Source Local Government Software Suite is by-the-way sitting in the No.1 spot for ideas to make local government better, so there should be a fair bit of support for the project around the country.
Part of the project is AMOS - an Open Source Asset Management System. I believe that the AMOS developers will being keeping an eye on the AMS requirements section of the LGAM Asset Management System page, as they are building the system, so if you have any ideas about what functionality an Asset Management System should have please let us know, or edit the page yourself.
Site Update No.3 (2011)
03 Mar 2011 21:18
24 new people joined the site in February bringing the total to 343. Welcome to:
ufa
phillipA
leswhalley
Suzanne Charnock
Basia1607
begagis
HaroldPCC
Ulung
BenWright
Louise_RVC
David Paschane
cjajal
muzza69
Sue Sue
Kathy Conway
AFMSA
ddimartino
Mary Maher
Jan Swanepoel
Glen Frost (Frocomm)
DamienDouglas
Tim Taber
Mim Buchhorn
Peter Savage
The site was visited 9,645 times in February and 18,479 pages were viewed.
A further 87 pages were added to the site bringing the total number of pages to 3376.
Click here for more detailed site statistics.
Site Update No.2
13 Feb 2011 20:40
We recently sent out an Asset Management Update to Councils via e-mail. This resulted in a record number of site visits (2613) & page views (5915) last week, and will hopefully translate into a few more people using & contributing to the site on a regular basis.
Three more ideas were added to the ideas page. If you like them, vote them up.
- Embrace the Government 2.0 Philosophy
- Host a Local Government Innovation Summit
- Embrace Creative Commons Licensing
Quite a few other new pages, including those listed below were added to the site, bringing the total number of pages on the site to 3344
- Gazebo
- Quantitative Asset Data
- Underground Asset
- Dial Before You Dig
- Australian Local Government Women's Association
- Water Authority Mailing List
- NZ Council Mailing List
- Underground Service
- Kerb Marker
- Succession Planning
- People
- Wanted Photos
- Civic Park
If you have any other page suggestions, please let us know.
Useful LInks
10 Feb 2011 23:23
The folks at ACELG were kind enough to add this site to their list of useful links recently. This is greatly appreciated - in fact all links to the site are greatly appreciated, and we do our best to return the favour where we can. If you know of a site of interest to local government let us know and we will be happy to add a link to it.
There are already quite a few pages on the site that attempt to point you in the direction of other sites & projects of interest, including those listed below.
… but we are always looking for new ways to make local government more connected, so we thought a page devoted to the people behind the links might not be a bad idea.
If you know of someone who is doing their bit to connect local government, please let us know and we will add them to the people page.
Towards an Australian Government Information Policy
08 Feb 2011 06:03
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has recently released an issues paper for comment, with a view to developing an Australian Government Information Policy. The draft principles align very nicely with some of what this site is trying to achieve and are well worth a read.
Comments on the draft principles can be made via the OAIC Blog.
Searching for Success
06 Feb 2011 09:23
LGAM pages are now the top Google search result for 30+ local government related terms. This is great for the site, and a great example of how powerful free & open information sharing can be. It also shows that information hidden away behind a paywall or in a members only area is a lot harder to find than information placed in a public website. And it means when Local Government people search for information about subjects like Asset Management Plans or Gravel Resheeting or Kerb & Channel they are probably going to find it here rather than in a book or manual. Hopefully other organisations with information of value to Local Government take note, and start making their information more freely available too.
The graph below shows how the number of visits via search has increased over time.
January 2011 Update
01 Feb 2011 09:48
6 more people joined the site in January bringing the total to 319.
As of 31 January 2011, the site has been visited on more than 73,400 occasions and just over 230,000 pages have been viewed. More people visited the site during January than in any previous month.
Local Government Reform Fund - Advancing Asset Management
28 Jan 2011 04:39
The Queensland Government & LGAQ have just announced that they were successful in obtaining $2.7 million in funding from the Federal Government's Local Government Reform Fund to support Queensland Council's developing Core Asset Management Plans for key infrastructure assets.
2010-2011 Floods
13 Jan 2011 05:04
A page has been created to share information about the 2010-2011 Floods. Please feel free to add to or edit the page.
December 2010 Update
04 Jan 2011 20:32
8 more people joined the site in December bringing the total to 313.
- leannem
- Helen Benstead
- davidoakgrov
- jcranston
- starrme
- tom judge
- Gago14
- essenture does not match any existing user name
According to the 2010 Google Analytics Report the site was visited 51,422 times in 2010 & 123,949 pages were viewed. This compares to 12,619 visits & 80,210 page views in 2009.
Wikis in Plain English
17 Dec 2010 01:11
Just added this youtube video to the Wiki page. It explains wikis in plain English.
If any of you are still a bit unsure about what a wiki is it might be worth a look.
November 2010 Update
07 Dec 2010 20:33
Nine more people joined the site in November, bring the total to 305. A big welcome to all of you.
- Sportsman
- Andy36
- David Alman
- tsangk
- Geordie Lascelles
- Peter Drew
- David Gunawan
- Julie Basford
- lindajs1
The November 2010 Google Analytic Report shows that 7110 people visited the site in November which is a new record.
New site features implemented in November include the Ideas page, the Wish List and automatic Twitter updates.
Tweet Tweet
30 Nov 2010 21:23
A Twitter button has been added to the bottom right of the main page. Please feel free to use Twitter to tell the world about the site.
2009/10 Annual Return on the Status of Asset Management
23 Nov 2010 00:03
The Queensland Department of Infrastructure & Planning recently released a report on the 2009/10 Annual Return on the Status of Asset Management.
You can download a copy of the report from here.
300th Member
15 Nov 2010 08:55
The site now has exactly 300 members, which makes it one of the most popular Wikidot wikis. On the other hand this number still only equates to just over 0.5 members per Australian Council, so there is still a lot of potential for growth. Whatever happens we a going to continue to try and make it one of the very best free resources for Local Government in Australia & around the world.
Google Maps URL Shortener
12 Nov 2010 21:58
Google has done it again. (Snuck a nice little improvement in with out telling anyone.)
You have always been able to send people a link to a google map you have made, but the link was always rather long
Now they have a built in URL shortener that generates links that look a bit more like this.
http://goo.gl/maps/74jo
What's the big deal? It means the code for linking to Google Maps looks a whole lot less scarier.
A link from a Council's postal address has always been part of our plans,
e.g. Narromine Shire Council
but now we can (hopefully) do it with out making the page code too complicated for novice users to use.
Innovative Ideas
05 Nov 2010 03:05
One of the more frequent contributors to this site Darron Passlow has started up a new site dedicated to Council Innovation. It is a work in progress, but if you are interested in innovation it could be worth a visit.
http://innovativecouncil.wikidot.com/
And whilst on the subject of innovation, a new "Ideas" page has been added to this site. If you have any ideas for improving local government, or if you would like to vote on the ideas already listed, please do so.
October 2010 Membership Update
01 Nov 2010 00:55
9 more people signed up to the site in October, bringing the total number of site members to 296.
A big welcome to:
28 Oct 2010 19:59
This site has had a twitter account since April 2009, but if you are currently following it you won't have received many updates so far. That is about to change. Wikidot has just turned on some new functionality that allows new page notifications to be posted to Twitter. If you want to stay up-to-date via twitter, our account name is "LGAM".
Looking for Friends
22 Oct 2010 03:26
Just added a new section to the top of the front page called "Friends of LGAM". We are always looking for ways to let people know about the site and what it contains. One way of doing this is by word of mouth. There are a lot of companies that deal with a wide range of Councils, and we thought it might be worth a try to get those companies to spread the word for us. If your company thinks this site is a valuable resource for Local Government and you would be willing to tell your clients about us, let us know, and we will add you to our list of friends.
Free Reference Documents
20 Oct 2010 03:05
This site is a big believer in the free dissemination of information. Free information is definitely out there, but it is not always easy to find. If you use or know of a good free local government related reference document, and where to download it please let us know by commenting on this post (click on "comments" below then "reply" at the bottom right of page) and we will add a link to it ASAP.
Below are links to the few documents already listed on the recently created Free Reference Documents page.
Thanks for the Contributions
12 Oct 2010 12:37
The site will be exactly 2 years old at 8:24am on 13 October 2010. In that time 120 people have contributed content to the site or left a comment on the forum, and another 190 or so have offered moral support by becoming site members. This is a great big thank you to all 310 of you.
September 2010 Update
02 Oct 2010 01:05
The September Google Analytics Report has been uploaded to the site. It shows that the site had more visitors than ever last month, but that the total page views were down a bit from August.
Also, the site now has:
- 3077 pages of content.
- 288 Site Members
- 86 photos registered in the photo library, and a heap more still to come.
- 558 definitions in the Glossary
Second Aniversary
28 Sep 2010 06:08
The site will be two years old on 13 October. We think the site is pretty useful already, but we would like it to be even better.
To start Year 3 off with a bang we are trying to encourage site members to do two very easy things over the next couple of weeks.
- Tell a work colleague or contact about the site and encourage them to sign up.
- Leave a comment or ask a question on the forum. If you can't think of a question you can always introduce yourself.
Photo Library Update No.1
14 Sep 2010 22:47
The site's photo library has just got a big boost. with Austroads agreeing to allow photos extracted from "A Guide to the Visual Assessment of Pavement Condition" to be re-used on the site as long as they are correctly attributed, and Assetic donating quite a few asset condition photos to the cause as well.
Australian Population Graphs
10 Sep 2010 22:37
Google have recently added a new tool to there ever increasing list of free services. It is called Public Data Explorer, and one of the databases it has access to is the ABS population database. If you are interested in how the population of your municipality has changed over time it might be worth a look.
Google Public Data Explorer - Australian Population Figures
Lucidity 2010
07 Sep 2010 23:54
The program for the 2010 Local Government Information Technology Conference has just been released. More information can be found on the conference website - http://it2010.coffsharbour.nsw.gov.au/
More visits last week than ever before
06 Sep 2010 05:11
Last week the site was visited 1590 times which is a new record, and the weekly visits graph is definitely starting to trend upwards. Hopefully this will translate into more contributors and an even better site.
August 2010 Update
01 Sep 2010 08:27
22 new members joined the site in August, bringing the total to 275.
As of 31 August, the site has been visited on a total of 38,689 occasions and 165,320 pages have been viewed.
The site was visited almost 6,000 times in the last month, which is by far the most visits in a single month in the history of the site.
Another 95 pages were added to the site in August, bringing the grand total to 3,016
Image of the Moment
19 Aug 2010 11:10
The home page has been modified slightly. The Image of the Day has been replaced by an Image of the Moment which changes every few minutes. The image of the moment will showcase the photos in the photo library.
Photo Library
19 Aug 2010 06:00
The LGAM Photo Library is starting to come along nicely, following contributions from the following Councils and organisations.
BI study for Local Government
19 Aug 2010 00:11
Hello, Everyone.
We have commenced a new study for local councils – we are looking into utilization of Business Intelligence (BI) technologies. The requirement for open government puts additional pressure on local councils to re-evaluate and improve their BI capabilities. However, the deployment and adoption of BI is particularly challenging for local councils as their needs and objectives differ markedly from those of traditional users of BI technologies. This first of its kind study will provide comparative peer data based on actual experiences of local councils with different BI solutions (internally developed spreadsheets vs BI built into ERP vs enterprise BI) and will enable local councils to better evaluate their options and strategies. If you wish to participate, please e-mail to service(at)tech-indicators.com.au or visit our website for more details -> http://www.tech-indicators.com.au/studies. Leila Abbasova, Technology Indicators
AGIMO wants us to work collaboratively
02 Aug 2010 05:12
According to a recent article, the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) is encouraging government (& presumably local government) people to work collaboratively in externally hosted environments - which is exactly what this site is. It is fantastic that the federal government is being so supportive of this sort of open collaboration.
LGAM Newsletter
01 Aug 2010 23:54
Just finished putting together a Newsletter. I am intending to send it to every Australian Council over the next month or so. I hope it will help persuade a few CEOs of the site's potential, and convince them to encourage their staff to use and contribute to the site. If all goes well, I would like to send out a new newsletter every six months. Any feedback about the newsletter, or future content suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
LGAM Glossary Update
21 Jul 2010 22:24
The LGAM Glossary now contains over 550 definitions, and is growing rapidly. For anyone who wants to be able to use the glossary whilst offline, updated versions in a number of formats are now available.
June 2010 Update
02 Jul 2010 03:05
6 new members joined the site in June, bringing the total to 238.
As of 30 June, the site has been visited on a total of 29,008 occasions and 138,113 pages have been viewed.
Another 146 pages were added to the site in June, bring the grand total to 2,279
User Survey
17 Jun 2010 23:50
An LGAM User Survey page has just been added to the site.
If you have 5 minutes to spare, and you would be willing to participate, it would be greatly appreciated.
May 2010 Update
01 Jun 2010 19:58
13 new members joined the site in May, bringing the total to 232.
As of 31 May, 17,372 different people have visited the site on a total of 25,911 occasions and viewed 129,579 pages.
As the Google Analytics graph below shows, the number of people visiting the site has increased considerably over the past few months.
Google Wave is Open for Business
23 May 2010 04:17
Google has just opened up Google Wave to everyone. When it was originally released to a limited number of people for beta testing everyone was very excited about it, but after about a week or two it was being written off as a dud. I suspect there will be a resurgence in interest in it, now that it has been opened up, and that in a year or two people will be using for all sorts of things. I'm intending to set up public waves for interesting LGAM pages for anyone interested in discussing the content in a neutral forum to do so. I'm also going to try and use Wave to try and hold virtual meetings on Local Government related issues on a regular basis. If anyone has any suggestions for discussion topics please leave a comment here.
spatial@gov conference
18 May 2010 07:16
Speaking opportunities at spatial@gov conference are available. More info is on the CeBIT website http://www.cebit.com.au/2010/conferences/spatial-at-gov
Mobile & Flexible working in LG
18 May 2010 03:39
A study into Mobile & Flexible working in local government agencies is underway. Participating local councils will receive a complimentary benchmarking/research report (due late June 2010).
If interested, contact www.tech-indicators.com.au
Pavement Guide Interactive
13 May 2010 23:26
Just stumbled across a nice American website called Pavement Guide Interactive, which contains heaps of information about road pavements. Looks to be a good free resource for anyone interested in road pavements.
The website's address is: http://training.ce.washington.edu/PGI/
Google & LGAM
13 May 2010 14:13
This is actually fairly old news, but I thought it may be of interest. There are a few terms that you can search for using Google, that will return a LGAM Knowledge Base page as the first hit. "Highlift Pump Station" is one example. Go on - do a Google search on the term and see what happens. Also if you do a search for lgam + any other term, say "LGAM Road" you will get a whole lot of hits on pages from the site. This means you can use Google to search the site with out having to visit it. Backtracking a bit, if you did the search for "Highlift Pump Station" you will notice the page is a bit bare, so if you know a little about the subject, please consider adding to the page. It seems a shame to have the number one Google search spot and not make the most of it.
Happy Googling
April 2010 Update
01 May 2010 22:52
9 new members joined the site in April, bringing the total to 219.
As of 30 April, 14,405 different people have visited on a total of 22,344 occasions and viewed 119,260 pages.
As the graph below shows, the number of people visiting the site has increased considerably over the last couple of months.
The D-Shape of things to Come
21 Apr 2010 21:29
An Italian inventor has recently sucessfully tested the prototype of a machine that may eventually have a huge impact on a number of Council functions.
The machine is 3D sandstone/marble printer nown as the D-shape. It has the ability to automatically build large monolithic sandstone and marble structures from a CAD drawing. According to the D-Shape Website its Civil Engineering applications include: Bridge portions, road portions, tube sections, pillars portions, stone floating, harbor sections, marina furnishing, variable section beams and columns, Water depuration, insulation plates. It is easy to imagine in 10 or 20 years time, that Councils will be receiving applications from people wanting to build dwellings and commercial premises using this technology, and perhaps even Council having a D-Shape truck in their fleet that is used for any number of construction jobs. Have a look at the site. The future is almost here!!
Local Government Knowledge Exchange Network
20 Apr 2010 00:59
The Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government is currently in the process of setting up the Local Government Knowledge Exchange Network a Ning based social network for local government employees, and is looking for a few beta testers for the site.
If anyone is interested the address is - http://aucelg.ning.com/
March 2010 Update
02 Apr 2010 20:24
9 new members joined the site in March, bringing the total to 210.
As of 31 March, 11,705 different people have visited on a total of 19,289 occasions and viewed 112,377 pages. More people visited the site in March (2,225) than in any previous month in the site's history. There were quite a lot of visits from outside Australia including a large number from Sacramento in the USA. (Hello to anyone from Sacramento reading this news update)
There have now been visits to the site from 138 different countries. The ten countries generating the most visits are:
- Australia (14,296)
- United States (1,673)
- United Kingdom (557)
- New Zealand (517)
- Canada (348)
- South Africa (246)
- India (194)
- Malaysia (108)
- Brazil (69)
- France (64)
Council News via RSS Feeds
10 Mar 2010 23:15
A few Councils are starting to publish news via RSS feeds, and these are being added to individual council pages on this site, e.g.
- Bass Coast Shire Council
- Bundaberg Regional Council
- Casey City Council
- Cassowary Coast Regional Council
- Ipswich City Council
- Lake Macquarie City Council
- Mackay Regional Council
They are also being aggregated on state based news pages, e.g.
If your council is publishing news by RSS, please let us know, by leaving a comment below.
Local Government Calendar
02 Mar 2010 22:59
A Local Government Calendar has been added to the site and can be accessed from the side menu. If you have a local government related event that you would like to let people know about, please feel free to add it to the page.
February 2010 Update
01 Mar 2010 11:57
7 new members joined the site in February, bringing the total to 201.
The site now contains 2400+ pages of information, and as of 28 February, 9,589 different people have visited on a total of 16,701 occasions and viewed 104,604 pages.
As the graph below indicates, the number of unique visitors each week has been growing steadily since Christmas, and last week 300+ people visited the site.
There are a few new site features planned in the near future so stay tuned.
LGAM Glossary
26 Feb 2010 05:10
A PDF version of LGAM Glossary has been added to the site. Click here to download a copy.
January 2010 Update
01 Feb 2010 09:27
17 new members joined the site in January, bringing the total to 194.
The site now contains 2333 pages of information, and as of 31 January, 8,626 different people have visited the site on a total of 15,244 occasions and viewed 98,284 pages.
A new link (Photo Library) has been added to the side menu, and a dozen or so images of typical council assets have been uploaded to the site.
Australian Municipal Photo Library
22 Jan 2010 20:55
Darron Passlow, one of the more frequent contributors to this site has suggested here and in other forums that a Visual Library for Asset Condition Rating would be a very useful tool for local government. The idea of the library is to build up a collection of photos of assets in various conditions that could be used to develop a series of condition assessment guidelines similar to the Corowa Shire Council Sealed Roads Condition Inspection Booklet, but for all asset types for which a visual inspection can be used to determine asset condition. Preparing condition inspection guidelines is not a simple task, and a bit of thought will need to go into how the project is set up, BUT taking photos is pretty easy, and there are many other uses for photos of Council assets & activities. The Local Government & Municipal Knowledge Base is all about Councils sharing information & encouraging the creation of an Australian Municipal Photo Library is the sort of thing that we as a group should be doing. A new link has been added to the side menu titled "Photo Library". If you have any photos that you would like to contribute to the project please visit the page & start uploading.
ListPages Module Changes
19 Jan 2010 20:47
This won't mean a lot to most users of the site, especially if you aren't very IT orientated, but developers of the host site Wikidot have made a couple of minor changes to how the "ListPages module" works.
Many of the lists on this site are automatically generated using the ListPages module, which is fine and dandy, but usually of no interest to most users, even that select few that make edits to pages.
However if you happen to make a change to a page with a list, even if a change that has nothing to do with the list, you might find when the page is recompiled it looks very different. Don't Panic, and please don't be put of editing pages and contributing to the site, nothing too serious has happened.
It will get fixed as soon as it is noticed, but if you are keen and proactive you can fix the error yourself. Just move "[[/module]] down a line, e.g.
Change the code that looks a bit like this ….
[[module ListPages order="random" limit="20" separate="false" tags="-hide"]]
%%linked_title%%[[/module]]
To look a bit more like this ….
[[module ListPages order="random" limit="20" separate="false" tags="-hide"]]
%%linked_title%%
[[/module]]
Understand? If not it doesn't really matter. The main thing to remember is that all contributions to the site are very appreciated and it is impossible to break anything or delete anything permanently, so go for it!!
First News for 2010
15 Jan 2010 04:37
Actually, it has been pretty quiet on the news front lately, but hopefully things will start picking up as people come back from holidays.
The site is now 15 months old. It has 182 members and about 50 people are visiting the site on a typical day.
A feedback section has just been added to the forum, to try and find out what everyone thinks about the site, how well known it is in Local Government circles, and how it might be able to be improved. If you have 5 minutes, any comments you might have would be greatly appreciated.
November 2009 Update
01 Dec 2009 21:18
6 new members joined the site in November, bringing the total to 171.
The site now contains 2132 pages of information, and as of 30 November, 7,290 different people have visited the site on a total of 13,126 occasions and viewed 87,857 pages.
Australian Community Wiki Network
17 Nov 2009 05:45
One of the main objectives of this site is to try and find ways to help Councils help themselves by making it easy for them to collaborate & share information with each other. Another opportunity for collaboration is between Councils and their communities. The Australian Community Wiki Network has been set up with this in mind. It will be a place for community, sporting & other groups to tell their communities where they are and what they do, and to share information with other similar groups around Australia. It is a work-in-progress at this point in time, with only a dozen or so wikis created so far, but hopefully with time it will become a good resource for Australian communities, and possibly a neutral place where councils can interact and consult with their ratepayers. For now if you belong to a community or sporting club of some description, why not give it a visit, and give your group a free plug?
Unit Rates
05 Nov 2009 02:06
Determining accurate or even realistic unit rates seems to be a big issue for local government. I know for a fact it's an issue for both Bundaberg Regional Council, and for some of our neighbours, and I have seen a number of discussion about it on various other forums. I know it is true that the cost of an activity will vary considerably from location to location, but all-the-same I think an open database of typical unit rates for those works regularly undertaken by Councils would be a very useful resource for many Councils.
I have been thinking about this for a while now, and I think I have come up with a good way of getting the project happening.
If you are interested, please check out the Unit Rate page, for more information.
October 2009 Update
03 Nov 2009 00:50
15 new members joined the site in October, bringing the total to 165.
The site now contains 2050 pages of information, and as of 31 October, 6,604 different people have visited the site on a total of 11,900 occasions and viewed 81,742 pages.
The average number of people visiting the site each weeks seems to be trending in the right direction, but it is still pretty up and down from week to week.
The Forum
29 Oct 2009 21:22
The Forum has been pretty active over the last few weeks or so - in comparison to its usual slumber at least. It is very gratifying to see it being used, and I hope more users take advantage of it in the future. If you are a bit hesitant to contribute to pages, but would like to be part of the site, leaving a comment on the forum is probably the easiest way to start.
I just started an Introduce Yourself Thread, which would be an ideal place to start if you are thinking of taking the plunge!!
Front Page Makeover
26 Oct 2009 20:08
The front page of the site has been changed a bit to make it look a bit more colourful & interesting. If you have any suggestions about how to improve it further, please let us know by commenting on this post.
User Map
22 Oct 2009 03:50
I thought a map showing where the contributors to this site come from might be of interest, I haven't quite finished plotting everyone's location just yet, but it is starting to take shape.
Click here for a larger version of the map.
Open Collaborative Design
17 Oct 2009 22:37
I have just created a new page about Open Collaborative Design, which is a concept I believe could radically change the way Local Government functions, and make it incredibly more efficient.
Please read the AdCiv.org AdCiv.org article referenced at the bottom of the page. It eloquently sums up a lot of the things that made me want to create this site.
Happy Birthday LGAM
13 Oct 2009 04:13
The site is exactly one year old today.
In the last year:
6,022 people from 97 Countries have visited the site on 10,840 occasions and viewed a total of 76,066 pages.
Most visitors are from Australia, but there have been a sprinkling of visits from far and wide.
If you want to know more, please check out the Who visits this site page.
September Update
29 Sep 2009 23:35
It is the end of September and the site's first birthday is only 13 days away (13 October).
There are now over 1950 pages on the site, and the 150th member signed up a couple of days ago.
Last week saw the greatest number of people visit the site (696) since I started using Google Analytics in November last year. Hopefully the number of people using the site will continue to grow in the next 12 months.
September innovations include;
- a Tutorial on how to get the most out of the site.
- Bundypedia a separate site created to show how Wikidot can be used to set up an Council Extranet or Community website.
Tutorial Page
18 Sep 2009 21:35
I've been thinking about ways of making it easier for people to make contributions to the site. I imagine there are a few people who would like to contribute, but aren't too sure where to start, so I thought a Tutorial page might be a good idea. It is still in its infancy, but the page is here if you would like to have a look. Any suggestions about what to include in the tutorial would be greatly appreciated.
Problems
26 Aug 2009 20:49
A big SORRY to everyone who tried to access the site yesterday, and got an eror message instead of the page they were looking for. The wikidot servers were playing uo all day and down completely for a few hours over night. I'd like to assure you all that the problems are a rarity and the site is up and running perfectly well more than 99% of the time.
Click here for more information about the problems.
Milestones
13 Aug 2009 06:04
A couple of minor milestones today.
1. The site is now exactly 10 months old
2. At the time of writing it contained exactly 1800 pages.
New Header
10 Aug 2009 06:08
A change is good as a holiday, so I thought a change in the site header might be in order.
It is a little bit narrower which means a little bit more information on your screen, which is a bit of a bonus when you are looking at a long page.
We are not alone.
03 Aug 2009 00:02
Whilst there are quite a few Public Sector Knowledge Sharing Initiatives already in existence, until recently the Local Government & Municipal Knowledge Base, was the only one that was;
- Local Government focused
- Open
- Trying to build an encyclopedic knowledge base for Local Government
BUT, as of yesterday, we are not alone.
Munigov an online community for US Local Government employees has just set up a wiki aimed at "allowing local governments to pool their knowledge in an effort to collaborate and share ideas, practices, policies, standards, and experiences". Those stated aims are very similar to ours.
I am hopeful that the Munigov Local Government Wiki will become a very good resource for local governments in the USA and around the world. I'll be supporting it as much as I can and I am hopeful that both sites will be able to learn from each other and prosper into the future.
Nine Month Aniversary
15 Jul 2009 05:44
It has now been nine months since the Local Government & Municipal Knowledge Base was set up.
There are now 1600 pages of information and 131 site members.
$25 million Local Government Reform Fund
27 Jun 2009 09:06
At the June 2009 Plenary Meeting of the Australian Council of Local Government a $25 million Local Government Reform Fund was announced.
The media release states that:
Over two years, the $25 million Local Government Reform Fund will:
* Assist councils implement new asset management and planning consistent with a national framework;
* Fund the collection and analysis of robust data about councils’ infrastructure assets; and
* Support collaboration between councils on a regional basis for service delivery and planning.
Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government
26 Jun 2009 22:14
The Australian Federal Government has announced $8 million in funding for the new Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government. With a bit of luck the consortium behind the centre will be in favour of free & open knowledge sharing between Councils.
Adaptation to Climate Change
25 Jun 2009 07:06
As a freelance consultant I have assembled a considerable body of literature sources and have authored some papers which may be of interest to members of this wiki. For example one of the best studies I have seen with respect to the use of alternative fuels is the LG Report on Biodiesel. A link [http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=229] that I have found usefull will unfortunately be closed next week so I have uploaded the .pdf report. If anyone has a special interest in alternative fuels, slow pyrolysis and soil carbon, please let me know and I will endeavour to provide papers and links. I have also posted some NT specific material at www.geocities.com/cspnt01 .
Government 2.0 Taskforce
22 Jun 2009 02:40
The Australian Federal Government has just announced the formation of a new body called the "Government 2.0 Taskforce".
One of the objectives of the Taskforce is to "promote collaboration across agencies with respect to online and information initiatives — to ensure that efficiencies, innovations, knowledge and enthusiasm are shared on a platform of open standards."
It will be interesting to see if the taskforce has an interest in projects like this one that promote cooperation between Councils.
Page Count hits 1500
19 Jun 2009 06:01
The site now contains over 1500 pages of information. Not bad considering it is still only 8 months old.
The number of new members joining the site has dropped off a bit in the last few months, but the current tally is up to 127 never-the-less.
The lasted major addition to the site is the Waste Management section. Only a few Waste Management pages so far. but stay tuned for more.
20 May 2009
20 May 2009 06:04
I've changed the way that the site handles news updates. The two most recently created threads in the "News" category of the forum will automatically appear on the site's home page. Also you can now subscribe to the news feed via RSS.
