Review put on fast track

Hamilton City Council is fast-tracking a review into the most effective way to run its IT systems and event facilities.

HCC launched a full review in November last year to look at the best way to deliver 13 of the city's core services and two of those services have been already been accelerated to the second stage.

Councillors last week gave staff the go-ahead to launch into the second stage of a two-stage review into how it delivers its IT systems and event facilities on the condition they would be consulted at every stage.

Councillors John Gower, Peter Bos and Gordon Chesterman said they wanted to make sure councillors were kept in the loop about the process. Mr Gower said he would like to express a degree of "cynicism" and Mr Chesterman was reassured councilliors would not be in a position where they were given a fait accompli in stage two.

Alternative options to running services in-house include outsourcing or having them run by external council-owned organisations.

The council was accelerating the review into how it delivered its IT services because any changes to this would affect the work it is doing around Project Phoenix, including upgrading the council's IT system. The evaluation would be presented to council on April 7.

The development of the Claudelands Event Centre had also put urgency on the council to speed up the evaluation into how the council's event facilities were run so it could be completed ahead of the opening of the new $68 million complex. The report would be reported to council between November and February 2011.

- © Fairfax NZ News