While electronic planning (ePlanning) has been gaining increased support from stakeholders in state and territory across Australia, it has not yet evolved to a point where there is a common or strategic view about how ePlanning should be developed or integrated in the future.
This has led to some duplication of effort, lack of alignment between systems and legislation, high costs, lack of common standards, scarcity of skills and resources and lack of clarity about roles and responsibilities. A national approach was required to ensure that the required ePlanning initiatives are delivered in the most effective and economical way.
Over the past few years, a number of Jurisdictions have progressed their online planning strategies quite well. More recently, funding has been provided by the Australian Government to each jurisdiction to improve the online products to offer end-to-end solutions between government agencies and local councils.It is fair to say that while all jurisdictions was working towards a common goal, each state and territory delivered a unique set of online solutions that still need further work and refinement to become a national ePlanning solution. The emphasis over this period has also been on electronic development assessment (eDA) processes and the benefits that reform in this area can provide on housing affordability.
There was an opportunity to develop a National ePlanning Strategy, including the establishment of a common vision and blueprint for ePlanning in Australia, as well as identifying a roadmap that will achieve significant benefits from the introduction of holistic ‘front end’ ePlanning reform.
The objective of the National ePlanning Strategy project was to establish a common vision for ePlanning across Australia, review the work to date in each jurisdiction and develop a roadmap for the implementation of the vision towards 2020.The Strategy supports the achievement of planning reform through the following:
The PlanDev team worked closely with business and technical teams within each state and territory to develop the vision for ePlanning, understand where each jurisdiction is along the ePlanning Implementation Continuum and develop a plan to get there.