75 Victorian councils choose Crisisworks
In June 2011, the Municipal Association of Victoria, on behalf of its member councils purchased Datalink's Incident Response software, now called Crisisworks under a joint buying agreement.
There were four key aims of the project:
- Existing manual systems were time consuming and inefficient
- There were limited sharing / collaboration opportunities between agencies
- There was a fragmented approach to incident management
- Audit capabilities were limited
The project was aimed primarily at replacing the manual paper based systems used in Victorian local governments in their EOCs (known as MECCs), but extends beyond response into impact assessment, tracking and recovery.
During a very competitive tender process, Datalink's solution, now Crisisworks, was chosen. Crisisworks satisfied the key criteria and cloud infrastructure including a fully managed dual data centre solution for failover redundancy and have access to 24/7 support during incidents was set up.
In the initial pilot, a mix of regional and metropolitan sites were chosen. Of them were three councils who had previously used the solution for flood and bushfire incidents. Six councils - Alpins Shire, Shire of Yarra Ranges, City of Ballarat, City of Moreland, City of Maribyrnong and City of Latrobe were chosen to form the pilot sites and management panel for the project.
The rollout progressed to over 60 councils in 2011. During this time, Datalink has worked across the state delivering information roadshows, training workshops as well as providing implementation services and online training to support the councils involved in the project.
By December 2012, 75 out of a total of 79 Victorian councils were using the software.
During the project, several member councils have used the system for a range of incidents from small single house fires through to bushfires and widespread flooding.
