Mayor and Councillors briefed on final transformation changes

Published on 22 September 2025

New organisation structure, locality model, digital offerings in place.

Earlier this month the Mayor and Councillors were briefed on the progress of Council’s ambitious and country-leading transformation programme.

Presentations from the Customer Service and Case Officer leads, the team leading the new technology assisted tools for our call-centre, as well an update on the final stages of the project, were given and are available in a YouTube video now.

Councillors asked questions related to the programme, and enquired about the future of transformation as the team responsible for it wraps up.

Commenting on the changes, Cr Jim Hopkins stated: “I’m staggered at the fact that so much of this has been done in-house. It’s a huge tribute to the capacity of Council to reinvent how we operate within the organisation”

Cr Brent Cowles, who had used some of the new online forms, said: “As someone who’s used the new online forms, it’s been great to see how they can be updated to reflect changing legislation – or feedback from users.”

Deputy Mayor Halalele – “It’s really exciting to see, and it’s good that there’s room for constructive feedback. We’ve always got room for improvement”

Cr McCone – “I’d like to congratulate everybody involved in what you’ve done, and the amount of stuff behind the scenes that has made the foundation for this to work. The proof in the pudding will be in the next 6 months when the ratepayers start using the system. I can see the future benefits and systems making Council work a lot faster than it does now, so thank you”

Council will be publishing details of each part of the transformation workshop this week in a series of media releases.

ENDS

media@waitaki.govt.nz