West Arnham Regional Council
West Arnhem Regional Council (WARC) is a local government area of the Northern Territory, Australia. Its borders encompass some 50,000 square kilometres of spectacular outback landscape at the very top of the Top End.
The jewel in the crown, the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, sets them apart as one of the most culturally important and environmentally significant corners of the Northern Territory. From remote islands and pristine beaches, to the vast floodplains and dramatic escarpments, their towns, communities and outstations are as diverse as the country around them.
Through its community services, West Arnhem Regional Council provides social benefits to their diverse communities. It is important that their communities are safe, and that the most vulnerable people in the society – children, youth, the aged and disabled – are supported. Along with its community safety programs, aged care and youth services, the Regional Council delivers a range of programs in sport and recreation, culture and heritage, and radio broadcasting. Council delivers on these critical social requirements by staying connected to and engaged with their communities. WARC Community Services includes:
Community Safety (Night Patrol/Women’s Safe House)
Youth Sport and Recreation (YSR)
Out of School Hours Care (OSCH)
Community Care (Aged Care/Disability Care)
Childcare/Crèche
Jabiru Library
Their challenge
Data collection within these community program areas is currently not as efficient or effective as it could be. Data is collected by hand and entered manually into a spreadsheet on an ad hoc basis. Information (e.g., monthly participation of women) is difficult to obtain quickly; often requiring manual calculation. Spreadsheets and paper-based forms can be particularly difficult to use or understand for those whose literacy/numeracy skills are limited, or for whom English is a second language.
These program areas work at the frontline with some of Australia’s most vulnerable populations. It is critical that Council accurately capture, record and learn from operations and data. The purpose of this data collection is to:
Provide better programs (informed by evidence, outcomes, impacts)
Community accountability
Feed information up to Councilors
Evidencing value of community services (internal / external)
Grant reporting / acquittals
Monitoring, evaluation, learning
Share information back with community and other stakeholders
Annual report / website / PR / media
Ongoing learning
Track outcomes, achievement, challenges, fails
Succession, sustainability
Improved data collection and analysis systems will allow Council to be more transparent, accountable and effective.
Our solution
The Towcha team worked collaboratively with Council’s Community Services team to determine requirements, discuss solution options and implement the agreed solution.
Taking into account the clients needs, objectives and budget, Towcha recommended and implemented a collection of online forms to collect the data using the Typeform platform.
Our Senior Consultants stepped the client through the process of determining the design of each form, providing advice around best practice while meeting the unique challenges each form needs to operate within.
Prototyping forms quickly gave Council the ability to review and provide feedback in short time, allowing them to demonstrate each prototype to their stakeholders. This provided great engagement with all stakeholders giving them an overwhelming sense of ownership in the process and the solution being developed.
Using Typeform’s integration with Google Sheets we automatically capture the data collected from each form in a consistent and secure manner enabling analysis and reporting to be easily created.
Our ongoing management of the implemented solution allows Towcha to monitor the use and quality of the data being captured, allowing us to advise Council on opportunities for improvements in form design, further automating workflows.
Results
Using Typeform’s conversational-style forms allowed us to customize each form to suit the specific language and technical abilities of each group of users. This enables them to complete and submit forms comfortably and confidently giving them a great sense of pride and achievement in their contribution to the success of the community programs being delivered to the community.
Accurate and automatic capture of form data has allowed reports to be generated and analysis to be performed with little effort, saving time and providing more stakeholders with timely information needed to successfully deliver their community programs.
The solution provides flexibility in design giving Council the opportunity to add new forms and enhance existing forms as their needs evolve over time.