SPECIAL PROJECTS INITIATIVE

FRANKSTON CITY COUNCIL Transparency Hub

Developed through extensive consultation across the municipality, Frankston City Council’s Transparency Hub has seen Frankston become the first Victorian council to give its community an online transparency portal that gives the community easy access to and understanding of council datasets.

The council-wide initiative is a digital hub providing the public with direct access to past and present data and other material from the council and its controlled entities. The data is published in an intuitive, user-friendly technology platform with the ability to analyse, visualise, and download data sets.

Data is made accessible through interactive visualisations, contextual storytelling, and a platform that allows the user to interrogate the data as they desire, from building their own charts and graphs to downloading the data to parse by their own means.

Publishing sensitive or confidential data would be considered a data breach, and datasets such as contracts awarded, grants, finances, and major projects all have the potential to be misconstrued. Being conscious of and sensitive to the need to ensure data security, all datasets were heavily scrutinised in terms of how context could be added to ensure they could be understood and accurately reported on, enabling a clearer understanding of how the council was performing. Council adopted a Data Exchange Policy to clearly articulate what could and could not be published to this end.

Mornington Peninsula Shire Council Traffic And Transport Team

Mornington Peninsula Shire

Safer Speeds

Mornington Peninsula Shire Council recorded one of its worst rates of fatalities and serious injuries in recent history in 2019, with 12 people losing their lives on roads and a further 200 acute hospitalisation claims lodged with the Transport Accident Commission following crashes within the Shire’s boundaries.

Research has shown that a reduction in vehicle speeds results in a disproportionally large decrease in risk. By travelling 10km per hour slower, the risk of being killed or seriously injured in a crash reduces by up to 40 per cent, for example.

Pushing for a downward trend, the council began a two-year trial of 80km per hour speed limits across 33 former 90 to 100km rural roads in late 2019 – one of the largest local government-led speed limit projects in Victoria.

With a vision of improving the safety of these high-risk roads, independent evaluations using data from both the council and the Transport Accident Commission have since found positive indications of change, with a 68 per cent reduction in serious or even fatal injuries at the time of nomination. The data has fuelled majority support for the changes from residents, with the reduced speed limits to be retained and even expanded to unsealed roads in the rea.

Initiatives that demonstrate excellence in the delivery of environmentally sustainable processes or projects. These provide a new way of ensuring programs, projects, and developments meet present needs without compromising future generations.

• Clarity of the initiative’s outcomes

• Innovative features

• Size and complexity of initiative relative to funding

• Cost benefits

• Sustainability of project

• Yarra Ranges Shire Council Environmental Stewardship Team Ribbons of Green Program

• Darebin City Council

Rewilding Darebin

• Strathbogie Shire Council

Greening Euroa Steering Committee Greening Euroa Project