LGAM Knowledge Base

Thanks, Darron. I try my best!

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/

Wayne
This is a credit to your perseverence and professionalism.

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.

Hi, Sammy,

I don't think it is common to measure a vehicles useful life in kilometres. I know that many Councils have policies about when a vehicle is traded in that are tied to kilometres, but this isn't necessarily the same as useful life.

At Bundaberg I believe we adopt a range of useful lives for vehicles depending on the make and model and a number of other considerations, including resale value etc.

I also understand that our fleet guys sometimes use the following site when trying to determine useful lives, etc.

http://www.redbook.com.au

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

Hi Everyone

This is my first post!

Does anyone know if there is a standard or benchmark for estimated the expected useful life of a motor vehicle in kilometres.

I need to calculate the remaining life of a second hand vehicle and was hoping to use the odometer reading.

Any ideas?

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 The Image of the Day has been replaced by an Image of the Moment which changes every few minutes.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.

The LGAM Photo Library is starting to come along nicely, following contributions from the following Councils and organisations.

• Bundaberg Regional Council
• Canning City Council
• Mildura Rural City Council
• Waverley Council
• Earthco Projects Pty Ltd

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

I have been thinking a bit lately about how best to determine a realistic useful life for long-lived assets and I believe that I have come up with a clever methodology for
a) assigning realistic, locally applicable useful lives to assets of a given type
b) estimating a realistic remaining useful life for assets if its condition score is known.

It requires that condition surveys of a reasonable sized sample of assets has been conducted on two occasions.

I have explained the methodology using dummy data here
http://brc-amps.wikidot.com/road-pavement-useful-life

But I would like to try it out on some real data.

If anybody would be willing to provide me with some real data, I would only be to pleased to run the analysis on it too see what I come up with.

Anyone interested?

Hi Darron,

I think I interpreted Chris' question a bit differently to you. I thought he was asking about publishing the advice of professional solicitors, not about giving out Adhoc legal advice.
Perhaps we need a legal opinion on if it is OK to share legal opinions?!

Chris, Wayne
I would be careful sharing legal advice through this forum.
There are too many "amateur" lawyers (not trained) reading this site and might be enticed to use some of this "adhoc" advice which could/would be taken out of context (because it is "free").
I think this could lead to some nasty ocurrences where non specific advice could be used in the wrong context with adverse legal implications for the (innocent) user and for this site.

Perhaps case studies here might be appropriate BUT NOT advice. But even this would require heavy disclaimers.

Most of our current advice here is from engineers and practitioners to engineers on a "use as appropriate" professionally acceptable basis (so disclaimer not necessary as it is implied).
DP

Hi Chris,

Welcome to the site and the forum.

It isn't really my field, but I suspect that publishing legal advice is probably OK providing their are no privacy issues associated with it.
I know that LGAQ circulates legal opinions from time to time, and publish them on their website in the members area.

I have given a link to the most recent one below, although you won't be able to view it unless you can log in to LGOnline.
http://www.lgaq.asn.au/group/guest/home/-/journal_content/56/10136/7BFB77B2C5312C9B81178258B6AE5DBE

I might try contacting them (LGAQ) tomorrow to get their take on the issue.

Some Councils expend considerable funds on legal advice which could be useful to other Councils - would it be "legal" to share opinions from Council Solicitors ??

I was wondering if anyone has any photos of road defects that they would be willing to release to the public domain?
I have already added a few road defect photos to the road photos page, but a few more would be nice.

Surely there must be a few good photos of corrugations or rutting sitting on a few hard drives somewhere?

User Adoption Strategies
Read a good book recently that may help with your systems implementation.

Visit [http://www.michaelsampson.net] and have a look at "User Adoption Strategies".

Lots of good information and things you might need to consider in rolling out, say an asset management system to end users.

Darron Passlow

Wayne
Your signing this out was not an issue for me, just perhaps some of the wording within the newsletter.
I agree your signing it out makes it more personal and people will tend to read/acknowledge a personal approach (even if they do not know you).

Also I am happy to help with the content and editorial of the next newsletter (if available).
I suggest my recent postings elsewhere on Government Innovation and "Open Source" discussions in the USA with applying Google apps across Government might be good relevant topics for next letter.
Let's set up a newsletter topics heading at LGAM where members and others can suggest topics they might like covered. This is user engagement and what we are all about.

DP

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.

Hi Darron,

I think you are correct about "we" being better than "I".

Whilst I passionately believe that the site is a very good thing for Local Government, I worry about the updates being considered to be SPAM. I thought putting my name and contact details on the e-mails and not hiding behind the site so to speak was the way to go. I actually would feel more more comfortable sending updates to Councils if I could sign them - "The Team at the Local Government & Municipal Knowledge Base".

What I/we should do is try and get an editorial team together for the next newsletter, and then set up a special e-mail address for it.
Any volunteers?