Service review program

OUR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

The City of Canada Bay has an active program of initiatives focused on continuous improvement. We strive for optimum service efficiency and effectiveness, productivity, cost containment and revenue opportunities.

As with many NSW metropolitan councils, the City of Canada Bay faces a growing population that requires more assets, facilities, and services. We strive to ensure that everyone in our expanding community has access to these assets, facilities and services to a benchmark standard or a standard that is desired by the community. However, we are also facing an income gap, with costs increasing more than revenues. Attempts so far to address this income gap have included: • Productivity gains and efficiency savings • Actively pursuing grants and working collaboratively with neighbouring councils • Carefully managing income and expenditure through regular budgetary monitoring. Council continually searches for opportunities that would result in a stronger favourable operating position to ensure financial sustainability to meet increased demand for services.

Service review program

The City of Canada Bay service review program is designed to support Council to achieve its strategic objectives and priorities in an efficient, economical, and appropriate manner. The program is embedded into the organisation’s Continuous Improvement Program to work toward achieving excellence in delivering the best value and effective services to our community.

The service review program is designed to provide: • Analysis of the service: assess and analyse all

Council services • Value for money: determine whether we are providing our customers value for money and look at ways to invest and improve the value and quality of our services • Options: help with developing options for how we offer our services • Organisational culture: realise the potential of Council staff to build a culture of service, engagement, teamwork, and continuous improvement • Accountability: develop clear accountability in achieving outcomes for our communities • Opportunity: identify new business opportunities to generate revenue,

and improve quality and productivity • Efficiency and effectiveness: efficient and effective services that meet the diverse needs of communities • Continuous improvement: ensure that proposed improvements are planned, delivered, and evaluated — plan, do, review. Guiding principles have been developed, and services that have completed a review process will be integrated into the Annual Service Health Check program as part of the annual business planning process to ensure a cycle of continuous improvement. A set of criteria was developed to prioritise the review program and will be aligned with our three-year internal audit program. With the plan to implement both programs simultaneously, in the financial year 2022–23, Council plans to conduct full reviews on two services as part of the service review program. In addition to full reviews, several manager-led reviews are also scheduled to improve service elements, as per activities in the Operational Plan. This combination of service review activity supports the continued strengthening of our culture of continuous improvement. The program of full reviews will, in time, roll out to all of Council's 45 services so that we can work towards providing the best possible value and services for residents and ratepayers.

Drummoyne Oval, Drummoyne.