Sunday, May 3, 2009

Shire Response Time Line

According to Dr. Michael Kennedy OAM, CEO: it is the policy of the Shire to respond to all written correspondence within 12 working days after receipt. The initial response may be in the form of an acknowledgement should the response require research or further consultation. Mr. Noel Buck, Manager-Governance and Corporate Support, further clarified this to include emails.

Please comment on any experiences you have had on this issue.

4 comments:

  1. My experiences have not been good in relation to this issue. As for emails, they seem to have no priority at all even when written to the CEO. Many times I have emailed the CEO to complain about the lack of response only to have those “lost in the system”. I believe the 99% performance rate is not a good representation of the actual performance. Even worse are the answers that avoid the question and are self serving from the bureaucrats. In many cases they actually answer a question that was not asked and sometimes blatantly ignore the question.

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  2. A tip.
    If the Shire does not meet its statutory requirements of good governance complain to the State Ombudsman. 'ombudvic@ombudsman.vic.gov.au'
    The Ombudsman is particularly interested in Local Government at present and has a growing file of complaints about the MPSC.

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  3. Statutory requirements? Is this a case of the fox looking after the chickens and writing the laws of their well being? Yes. Unfortunately I have had the very unwelcome necessity of trying to explain to council that they were directly and blatantly contravening their own local laws and their "Duty of Care". No surprise; partly they totally refused and rejected their own written laws, and partly they "interpreted the specific "overlay" laws differently. So what if residents do not agree with the laws as written by Local Councils (or nay authority for that matter), the time and effort that is required to (maybe) get appropriate, equitable and ethical action is now classed in the years.....and usually with the constituents loosing out. Dredging of the Bay, the Desalination Plant, The Pulp Mill in Tasmania, the massive expansion of the Olympic Dam Uranium Mine in South Australia; authority and power always wins. If the CEO chooses to disagree or not to reply, or to reply but take no action; with our current political situation, it appears there is nothing the constituent can do. A change of our completely out of date Constitution is desperately needed.

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  4. I've also had a discussion with Noel Buck about my emails which have tended to mysteriously disappear into a black hole. It is no great IT issue to implement a ticketing system that automates a response to the receipt of an email with a promise that it will be replied to within a given time.

    Our poorer resourced neighbour, Frankston Council, has a functioning system and it begs the question whether our council employees really want to talk with us.
    Richard Horvath

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