Mason’s Council efficiency transformation rewarded

COUNCIL

Howard Salkow

Senior Journalist

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ICT Team Leader Garry Mason took out the LGMA Queensland Award. Image: Supplied.

Garry Mason, Douglas Shire Council’s ICT guru, not only managed to raise the bar in his chosen field, he also received a state-wide award for his efforts.

DSC’s Team Leader of Information Communication Technology (ICT) led an efficiency transformation for Council in the midst of a global pandemic.

And in the process, he overcame numerous challenges during COVID-19 lockdowns last year to completely transform the organisation’s ICT systems from a cloud-based platform to in-house, reducing costs and increasing productivity within Council.

His work did not unnoticed. Mason was awarded the ‘Above and Beyond’ Award at the Local Government Managers Australia (LGMA) Qld Awards for Excellence.

DSC Deputy Mayor Lisa Scomazzon, Award Winning ICT Team Leader, Garry Mason, and Chief Financial Officer Tara Killeen. Image: Supplied.

Chief Financial Officer Tara Killeen said bringing the ICT system in-house was a mammoth task for the IT team.

“We are proud of Garry who has gone above and beyond over the years to overcome even the most challenging circumstances,” she said.

Mason said he was pretty surprised to get nominated and win the award. He said when the chips are down; you just do what needs to be done to get through.

“The project to move all of Council’s core systems from a cloud-hosted environment to servers onsite in Mossman was always going to be a big undertaking. Everything had to be re-built in Mossman and tested ready for a big bang change-over on a single weekend - 2020 was shaping up to be a trying year.


Two big shocks 

“Firstly, our cloud provider announced that they were closing their cloud data centre in November 2020 – so we now had a drop dead date.

“The second setback was Covid-19, de-railing all the planning and switching focus to rapidly building a work from home (WFH) system,” said Mason.

But there was good news. With the help of their key suppliers, the rest of the Mossman IT team, great support from management and staff, plus lots of good humour, the beat the deadline.  

Council’s ICT team, Mark Daly, Garry Mason and Tristan Burrows. Image: Supplied.

“While there was no loss of service, there were plenty of things that needed fine tuning after go-live but most users perceived the change-over as smooth,” he said.

Mason is no stranger to a transformational project under pressure.

When DSC de-amalgamated from Cairns Regional Council in 2014, Council required its ICT systems to be designed and implemented, which can normally take up to two years.

Due to the urgency, he and his team achieved this in three months. While IT systems were up and running in a short time, ongoing challenges included poor connectivity, frequent dropouts, different platforms and duplicate environments.

Mason, meanwhile, has shared a few tips for doing a successful project under pressure:

  • Always focus on how people can do things better in the future, you can’t effect the past, only the future;
  • When you are short on people and time, only do things that move you closer to your future vision;
  • When the going gets tough and it’s a choice between crying or laughing – pick laughing – it moves you forward.

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