Weekly column from Council Courier e-newsletter by CEO Greg Hallam, Friday 26 August 2016.
Let’s hear it for the big picture digitally connected knitters. That’s what councils need to be to remain successful.
“Hallam has gone fully mad”, I hear our members saying. Let me explain.
The reality is that civic leaders have to attend to the mundane and sometimes banal job of maintaining community infrastructure and providing services – sticking to their knitting – or get voted out in short time.
But these days, they need to contemporaneously (that's legal jargon for walking, talking and chewing gum at the same time) plug into the digital revolution or risk being left behind and turfed out of office, despite having patched the pot holes, picked up the rubbish and kept rates down.
Walking, talking and chewing gum at the same time is no easy task, but that's the gig for the Local Government class of 2016.
That dose of reality hit me while I was keeping company with our international guest speakers at last week’s Future Cities Forum in Brisbane. Frans Anton Vermast (pictured), a strategy advisor with Amsterdam Smart City in the Netherlands, and Raido Lember (pictured), an Estonia-based consultant for digital society and smart community development, are extraordinary men who have done extraordinary things, ensuring their cities and countries are world leading in providing digital infrastructure and services.
We made sure both of them visited councils on the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Ipswich and Townsville, as well as meet senior Queensland public servants during their short visit.
And reality bit again this week, at the Palaszczuk Government’s excellent Connecting to Asia Tourism Forum in Cairns yesterday, attended by around 20 mayors from around the state.
The pace of change in the Asian middle classes, their desire to travel to Australia and their absolute addiction to the digital world in every aspect of their life is, in a word, gobsmacking. This is a region that is harnessing Big Data and even bigger data analytics like few others.
One of the speakers quoted research showing Chinese millennials were opening their mobile phones and Facebook type platforms (actual Facebook is banned in China) up to 100 times a day! No TV for newspapers for them. All their media, all their business, is digital.
My guess is the under 35s in Australia aren't too far behind them.
What does this have to do with Queensland councils? It means that even our smallest communities can tap into this technology to tell their unique stories very cheaply, face-to-face, to first-time foreign travellers seeking authentic experiences.
The world is being turned on its head and a New World Order is emerging, and quickly.
That leaves mayors, councillors and CEOs having to straddle two firmaments Earth and Heaven or as one dry wit has said - it's like having your head in a freezer and your feet on the hot plates in dealing with immediate community and ratepayer needs- sticking to the knitting, while embracing a very different often scary digital future.
But that's our lot in local government as this so-called fourth industrial revolution rolls out lickety split. Hence, let’s hear it for big picture digitally connected knitters.