Interview: Mayor of Port Macquarie‐Hastings

Hinterland communities, cutting silos, and coping with disruption.

Mayor Peter Besseling discusses how his council will break silos across departments. What is your vision for the city? The council's vision is for a connected community that provides for its residents the ability to work and live. How will technology help? Technology will help drive efficiency and effectiveness gains within Council systems and will help provide for greater community connection to Council and its services. As the world continues to move towards greater use of mobile data, there are opportunities for Council to capitalise on the benefits that technology offers. This cannot, however, be at the expense of our relationship with those in our community who may not have the capacity or skills needed to take advantage of such changes. How will you develop your digital services? This will occur through developing sound internal practices and effective external options. Given the size of both Council's staff and residents within the Local Government Area, attention is required to be paid to both internal and external systems. What has been the greatest innovation from your civil service? The greatest innovation is a close alignment of both elected officials and Council staff that was achieved through adopting a Councillor Portfolio system. This allowed close alignment of both strategy and operations, that delivered services and infrastructure that were closely aligned with community expectations. How is the city using feedback from citizens? The community provides a great resource to Local Government, through their ability to provide critical feedback covering a broad area of Council services and infrastructure, timely highlighting of immediate issues and being involved in Council short-term and long-term planning. What has been the biggest challenge that the city overcame in 2016? The co-ordination and management of a large increase in capital works spending across the Port Macquarie-Hastings LGA was a huge challenge for the area, particularly in trying to minimise disruption to the community and in maintaining fiscal discipline. This included work in the centre of Port Macquarie that was well managed and achieved a wonderful outcome. What is your top priority for 2017? The top priority for Council will be to deal with the infrastructure challenges associated with the rapid growth of our community, both more recently and historically. Other priorities include capitalising on the opportunities associated with our recent expansion of universities and improved access to new markets such as Melbourne. If I were to visit your city, what one place would you recommend? I would certainly recommend a visit to any one of our beautiful beaches or our wonderful hinterland communities. We are lucky enough to have a lovely natural environment, alongside a very welcoming social structure.