Digital Action Plan

Where digital is today - key realities

Cybersecurity is a growing concern

• Threats are becoming more sophisticated and faster, making data protection and resilience critical to every digital strategy.

Many digital projects still miss the mark

• Without strong integration, governance, and data quality, technology investments often fail to deliver long-term value.

AI is reshaping service delivery

• Customers are increasingly open to using AI assistants, and service leaders are under pressure to deploy AI across their operations.

Customer expectations are rising fast

• People now expect personalised, proactive, and seamless digital experiences–making customer experience a key competitive differentiator.

Digital literacy is a major change

• Many workers and communities lack the skills to fully engage with digital tools, and large-scale upskilling is needed to close the gap.

Productivity paradox

• While individual workers often benefit from digital tools, many organisations struggle to scale those gains across teams and functions.

The Digital Action Plan 2026–2030 outlines our vision and steps towards a digitally enabled future. Through the plan’s informed technology choices, we can:

1. make our services easier to access
2. support productivity improvements
3. underpin our future growth.

The plan's foundation focuses on improving our internal systems and processes. It will also establish a technology infrastructure that will support the population growth of City of Moreton Bay.

Key outcomes for the plan

We recognise the fast changes in technology, and to counter this, our plan does not provide a list of technologies and technology projects. It provides the framework for our technology investments focused on 3 key outcomes:

1. Great customer experiences
2. Productivity in how we deliver service
3. Building a reputation as a digitally enabled city.

We are committed to putting the customer at the heart of our thinking.

We are shaping the future, and we are focused on what a well-planned, modern and digitally enabled city can achieve.

Our technology choices–today and in the future–will enable us to design, build and manage a growing city that delivers the quality of life that our communities value.

This Digital Action Plan sets out how we will make technology investments to support our Strategies, Plans and delivery of everyday services to our residents, visitors and businesses. We will be focusing on making it easy for our communities and our staff to access the information and services they need.

Our investments in data and advanced analytics will help us plan our infrastructure delivery to support growth in a managed way. It will also inform our discussions with other levels of government to help provide the critical and enabling infrastructure our city needs.

Cr Peter Flannery GAICD
Mayor, City of Moreton Bay
Board Director, Local Government Association of Queensland
Deputy Chair, Council of Mayors SEQ

As the third largest local government area in Australia, and one of the fastest growing, we are focused on shaping and delivering a thriving city that will be home to a million people in the next 30 years.

The world is increasingly being changed by new technology. Twenty years ago, no one would have expected to pay their rates or report a fallen tree via an app on a smartphone. Technology is creating huge opportunities for us to create additional capacity to deliver services to our communities.

We are innovative and ambitious, and for all the excitement that is created by technology we also recognise that we need to keep ours and our communities’ data secure, and to focus our technology investments on our strategic outcomes.

This Digital Action Plan sets out our Framework to invest in technology to support the creation of our City of Tomorrow. It sets out our key priorities and the principles and behaviours that will extract the maximum value from those investments.

The Plan creates the framework for us to deliver a new data and technology platform, which will set a standard for how councils manage their day-to-day operations as well as emergencies and natural disasters. Our Digital Foundations establish the core capabilities upon which our future technology investments will be built.

Scott Waters
Chief Executive Officer, City of Moreton Bay
MAICD MLGMA

Our commitment to the goals of the Digital Action Plan ensures we're improving processes for Council staff and residents.

Great customer experiences

• It will be easy for residents to access the services they need in convenient ways.
• Data and technology will inform how we create and manage places, precincts and parks of the highest standards.

Productivity in how we deliver service

• We can make improvements to how we work, saving time and money, so we can focus on what matters most.
• Using data to make better decisions, understand what our communities need and solve problems.
• Data and platforms will make it easy for City of Moreton Bay team member to do their jobs.

Building a reputation as a digitally enabled city

• Making data and information available to empower local businesses and communities to make informed choices.
• City of Moreton Bay is known as a place where technology companies want to be.
• City of Moreton Bay will nurture technology skills across our own departments.

Our ICT Principles are a mandatory framework for effective digital practices. They outline key elements to consider when designing or transforming products, services, and experiences.

Enterprise first

• Choose technology that meets our needs for everyone's benefit, with one version and one solution.

Security by design

• Build our systems with security at the forefront to protect our data and our residents.

Digital First

• Prioritise digital solutions for smoother, user-friendly processes and interactions.

Out of the box

• All software should be used as originally designed and intended, with minimal customisation.

Cloud First

• Choose cloud services first to keep our systems flexible, scalable and ready for growth.

Our 6 strategic enablers continue to improve and evolve City of Moreton Bay.

Process, people and partners

• Build collaboration internally and with industry partners to improve the way we work.

Policy and governance

• Make digital and data a part of all policies.

Data insights and intelligence

• Ensure data is used to create public value.

Portfolio and investment

• Ensure we treat digital as an investment to drive value for ratepayers.

Security and privacy

• Make our digital assets secure by design and protect residents' information.

Technology platforms

• Continue to evolve our technologies, putting the right tools in the hands of our staff to drive innovation and value.

Focus on the customer

• Applying human-centred design techniques to foster empathy with communities. This allows us to pinpoint the issues that need solutions.
• Using customer feedback to improve our systems and processes.

Solve the right problem

• Concentrating our efforts on the appropriate challenges by utilising evidence and insights.
• Gathering data from different sources, including government, industry, and community, while steering clear of assumptions.

Make it simple

• Focusing on reducing complexity in our operations.
• Streamlining processes and enhancing internal systems and tools.
• Ensuring simplicity is at the core of how we design our systems and how we use technology.

Build on the standard

• Making informed choices that lead to scalable digital solutions with a cloud-first approach.
• Making systems interoperable to reduce duplication and waste.

Progress over perfection

• Focusing on early testing for ideas and new concepts to ensure that the design aligns with the needs of our staff and customers.
• Embedding agility in our decision-making processes to minimise the time to deliver improvements.

Trusted by design

• Creating secure, safe and well-governed designs.
• Adhering to our adopted security standards in all digital investments.

Connect and partner

• Collaborating internally to develop interoperable solutions.
• Developing industry partnerships to create value for our customers and our economy.
• Making public data more accessible so it's easier to develop new business opportunities.

Innovate with purpose

• Focusing on our three key objectives.
• Fostering a culture of innovation and proactively promoting change throughout our organisation.

Our commitment to delivering value for money for our communities applied to our technology investments.

Understanding the true cost

• We will measure the full cost of purchasing, implementing and managing technologies.
• We will measure the time that our staff spend developing and managing technologies.

Understanding the true value

• We will apply the Digital Action Plan criteria to define the requirements for technology.
• Our technology investments will deliver value that is greater than the cost.

Understanding the true benefits

• We will measure the productivity gains from technology investments.
• We will measure the customer experience benefits of technology investments.