Toowoomba Council adopts Boomi for digital transformation

Toowoomba Regional Council in South East Queensland has implemented a cloud-based integration platform to streamline digital service delivery for residents.

The council is using the Boomi platform to help drive key digital initiatives such as its Internet of Things (IoT) water infrastructure project, which is replacing 64,000 conventional home and business water meters with smart meters powered by IoT technology.

The council’s digital transformation efforts have involved using data to improve digital services ranging from maintenance requests and water payments to managing development applications.

In a bid to expedite its transformation, the council has replaced its manual, point-to-point integrations with the Boomi platform, which the council is using to connect business-critical applications including its electronic document management system; ERP software; people, property, and regulatory software; property development portal; smart parking system; and waste services system.

Moving to the Boomi platform has allowed the council to eliminate data silos and information duplications to streamline its public-facing processes, according to the council’s Senior Integration Developer Miark Godfrey.

“In the past, residents reported that documents were going missing online, which would prompt the IT team to investigate and manually amend systems — this would take hours. Now, we’re no longer allowing antiquated processes to impact our engagement with residents, nor allowing it to hinder our governance,” he said.

“With Boomi, we’re able to meet state government requirements by ensuring development documents are available for public consumption. At the same time, we are gaining a better understanding of how residents interact with us. From capturing metrics on public requests to issuing alerts, we’re able to respond to documentation demand and problems in real time. This gives our technology improvements meaning — it’s not just advancement in the IT room, it’s also advancement for people and processes.”

The council next plans to adopt Boomi’s workflow automation solution Flow to implement improvements for residents, including the ability to submit forms such as direct debit requests entirely online through digital signing and automated internal triaging.

The council also aims to use Flow to stablish a 360-degree view of resident information within a single interface to allow employees to respond more quickly and accurately to resident enquiries.

Image credit: iStock.com/VioletaStoimenova