Back to Crisisworks

Victorian council rollout on schedule and due in 3 weeks

Posted 2 November 2011 by Scott Davey (Crisisworks)

MECC Central's development and rollout program is proceeding on schedule and we aim to have every council activated by December 10 as planned.  

Rollout timetable

The rollout starts on November 22 and will be competed by December 10. I cannot yet confirm an exact day for each council's activation, but as I know more I will be in touch. Contracts will be emailed today, and need to be signed and returned by Friday November 18. The supply contract is standard-form contract written by the MAV for this tender. 

Set-up

When we activate your service, the first time you log in you will be able to upload and customise various parts of the system. This includes:

• Basic details (MERC, MERO, MRM contact details)
• A nominated mobile phone number for sending SMSs from MECC Central (ideally your on-call mobile, if you use one)
• A contact list of agencies and agency users (CSV format)
• Council logo (PNG format in a square aspect ratio, any size up to 2 MB)
• Property data from your GIS system (CSV format)
• Any additional GIS layers you wish to provide (in KML or GeoRSS format)
• A list of council resources to be used in an emergency (CSV format)

The only details strictly required at initial set-up is the basic details, the council logo and the mobile number. The rest can be supplied later.

Improvements

We have been making improvements to the system as part of the MAV contract, and we are entering the acceptance testing phase next week. In addition to the system features we demonstrated during the roadshow, new features include:

• Council-to-council data sharing
• Council property data lookups
• Improvements to terminology
• The addition of fields to track the requestor
• Incident templates
• Improvements to audit and reporting
• Smartphone optimisation and user interface improvements

Training & Support

A structured training program has been developed and we are offering it via online training.  Training begins Monday 7th, and continues through November and December and into 2012.

Post-training support will be available in the form of an online knowledge base, as well as via email and via telephone.  Additionally, an induction system has been built into MECC Central, designed to quickly refamiliarise users with MECC Central before use. This will benefit users that have a gap between training and first use.

In addition to these support channels, you will have a priority support telephone number that you can call 24/7 in order to activate extended-hours support should the need arise. Details will be provided during training sessions, and also in your welcome pack which you'll receive once your system has been activated.  

Also, we are happy to assist you with the initial set-up of MECC Central when your system is activated. Please keep in mind that we may have higher than normal call volumes during the initial weeks of rollout.