Good software can be poorly implemented. Consider the Northern Territory of Australia where in 2008 one vendor was awarded the contract to supply and install state of the art business systems across the eight shires. The Local Government Minister Rob Knight at the time said the business systems were part of the job of getting on with fixing governance and service delivery problems in the bush.

Fast forward to mid-2009 when the Local Government Association is calling on the Northern Territory Government to release a confidential report into “a computerised business system used in super shires, introduced last year when local councils were amalgamated into super shires”.

The association’s Northern Territory president, Kerry Moir, says the new system was brought in without proper planning or training and super shires are now struggling to do their job. Ms Moir says the Department of Local Government and Housing needs to openly accept the report and act on its findings.