Parramatta. Independent link with business

Parramatta City Council has appointed Otto Hirsch, who “will play a key role as an independent nexus between council and the business community and other agencies”. He will act as convenor of council’s business Partnerships program and chair workshops and roundtables with businesses to influence and inform new projects for 2009/10. Mr Hirsch, operates his own business Advanced Strategy Centre. He has held senior positions with companies such as Brambles, BOC and Honeywell Controls. He also serves as GM, the UWS Sydney Graduate School of Management. He is a director of the Western Sydney Business Connection and a member of the AICD.

Parramatta. Real time at council

“Most importantly, we’ll know where we are now – not where we were a year or so ago,” said Parramatta City Council’s CEO, Dr Robert Lang, announcing the introduction of some 20 key performance indicators (KPI), in April. The KPIs will enable council each month to check on how it is achieving its budget and managing staff costs, improving DA assessment times and customer service, improving staff health, better managing staff and being more energy efficient, he said in a staff newsletter. “We’ll have the software for each unit to report upwards and interpret how we’re traveling … it’s crazy to be driving a complex organisation like this with a dashboard of indicators which aren’t up to date,” he said.