July 23, 2025 • 22 mins
What’s it really like working as a Business Analyst in local government?
In this episode of The Better Business Analyst Podcast, I’m drawing from real-world council experience to unpack 10 truths every BA should know before stepping into this space. Whether you're mapping legacy processes, digitising citizen services, or navigating political oversight—this sector demands clarity, patience, and sharp analysis.
We’ll cover:
Governance and red tape
Burnt-out staff and underfunded tech
Why “community impact” is your real KPI
And most importantly—how to deliver meaningful, lasting value to the people who rely on these services every day.
🎧 Hit play and let’s demystify local government—one BA insight at a time.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Today we're getting into a spaceI know well, local government,
or if you like regional government, or in the case of
America it would be state government.
It's one of the most misunderstood environments for
BA. People assume it's all slow
(00:21):
process and red tape, but the truth is it's where the real
people centered systems get built.
From DOB registration to building consents to community
funding, local government touches nearly every citizen.
So here are 10 things every BA needs to know about working and
(00:46):
local government. The Better Business Analysis
Institute presence, the Better Business Analysis podcast with
Kingsman Walsh. One of the first jobs I ever had
was actually a rates clerk, rates and property clerk at
(01:07):
Hamilton City Council here in New Zealand.
Nothing to do with it really, but we used an ERP system.
We rated properties. The city was growing.
We, I dealt with property valuations, the rating of those,
whether or not they were commercial or residential,
whether or not a developer was developing a piece of land which
(01:30):
was wool, which then needed to be brought into the city.
And as the city was growing, we needed to kind of keep an eye on
that because there was some sneaky rules where the rates
categorization wouldn't change within a year.
So one time there might have been a piece of land that was
just next to a property development area and then within
(01:54):
the year that would all be new properties and that developer
would save a year in rates and residential rates only playing
rural. So there was a whole lot going
on with that. And this was, I kind of got to a
senior position there maybe within maybe a year and a half,
two years. And then I got a role upstairs
(02:15):
in the IT area, starting as a systems analyst.
And so I spent quite a bit of time in this local government
environment in Hamilton to a position where I left as kind of
a more as ABA before going overseas.
Now also when I arrived in London, which was my first
(02:37):
destination on my kind of overseas experience, but it was
more than that, it was seven years.
I was lucky enough to have a British parents so I had a
British passport and I could go to Europe and Britain.
And I first got a job there at Hackney Borough Council, which
is one of the large councils in London.
And it's the area where the London Olympics happened a few
(03:01):
years later. It was quite an area that was
getting gentrified, which means it was turned hit from a kind of
a low income area to kind of a, a middle class area through
investment, through, you know, getting rid of council flats or
developing them, you know, adding more parks and so forth.
(03:22):
It's a huge council and I workedthere for a while, so this comes
from my experience working within the local government
sector. I also have friends who work in
this area and I wanted to give you these 10 things that every
BA needs to know about working in local government.
(03:42):
Number one, it's around the factthat you're delivering services,
not products. OK, so most BAS and councils
support public services, not commercial product lines.
It's a completely different mindset.
The outcomes are regulatory compliance, community well-being
(04:02):
and accessibility and growing you know your local community.
An example here might be you're building a system for managing
library memberships. It doesn't need to drive sales,
it just needs to be usable by every age group in the
community. And I recently went to the
(04:24):
Wellington Library in the central area of Wellington.
I live in the Lower Hut area, which is a different council,
and I used the library facilities to check out startup
book and it was so easy. To be honest, the customer
experience in that library was far superior to most businesses
(04:47):
that I visit. So they got a big tech for
usability there. the BA tip hereis that you need to anchor your
requirements in service outcomeslike fairness, use of ease,
efficiency for right payers. There's a few different dynamics
there. It's not a product world #2
(05:07):
governance and process rule the day.
Everything is policy driven. That's why they exist and
they're in a microscope scope for that in terms of they don't
spend rates payers money effectively they are in trouble.
When it's in the front of the news.
You can't just move fast and break things like a startup
world. It's on the other end of the
spectrum. Change must often go through
(05:31):
governance groups, public consultation, elected officials,
you get the idea. The example is you propose
changing a parking permit process.
Council policy requires community feedback, formal sign
off before being rolled out. OK, so it's not like the
commercial world where you just do it and you test it and the
(05:51):
customers drive that. the BA tipis you need to include
governance checkpoints in your agile BA plan from the Better
Business Analysis Institute fromday one.
You won't speed things up by ignoring them.
So you just need to know that the pace is a little bit slower.
It's not and like slow like central government, which is a
(06:12):
little bit different because of hierarchy.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
But local government has a lot less people.
So the hierarchy hasn't grown. That's not necessarily the case
for say, Hackney Borough Council, which was so big.
The province is so big within orthe regional area is so big
within London. It became almost the size of
central government here in New Zealand and in the UK.
(06:36):
And this is, this will be the case for the States and, and the
states you live in, but you probably have councils below
that. They took care of a much more
services than central government.
So in New Zealand we're very small and our central government
takes care of, you know, fundingfor hospitals, for example.
(06:57):
I know you don't really have a public health system in the US
too much, but in New Zealand andin the UK, it's public.
So it's free to go to a hospitalif you, if you desperately need
it and you know, you pay a smallamount to go see a doctor.
So that was handled by central government.
Whereas in the UK, things like education, the school system,
(07:21):
which is housed by central government, in New Zealand,
health and hospitals were lookedafter at that local level.
And that will probably be the case in America, I imagine #3 is
funding cycles shape everything.So budgeting and local
government often follows annual and long term plan cycles.
(07:44):
You see them published. They they are under public
scrutiny more than most projectsmay pause or strength or shift
scope based on funding availability or even election
cycles. So a bit like again, central
government, but to be honest, these are central government
(08:04):
usually will accept previous government's policy.
They've already invested a lot local government.
It's not the case they they seemto change much faster.
An example might be a customer portal with scope for 12
features or 12. You know, services service
offerings that budget cuts mean you're now delivering only four
and the rest are pushed to year 3 or maybe not done. the BA tip
(08:29):
here is that you need to define a minimum viable scope early.
So not a minimum viable product,but what is the scope that must
be done? And take everything else with
cost benefit priority levels. The cost benefit specifically,
not internal priority like you would with a corporation and
expect reprioritization. It will go up to a council level
(08:54):
#4 which is the point I was making earlier is that you wear
10 hats. Many councils don't have large
specialist teams. BAS are often the UX, the
tester, the PM support, even comps.
And I found the next point. It's a brilliant training ground
if you're adaptive. So I would say that the reason
(09:17):
I'm quite flexible, adaptable, and the reason I've been so good
in the private sector is becauseof the the early grounding I had
in the public sector, specifically local government,
not government, not central government.
In the role in local government,I wasn't just the BA, I was the
systems analyst, I was the application support analyst.
(09:40):
I rolled out, I did training, I did VoIP phones, I helped in
project coordination. I did everything.
And it was perfect for someone who was quite young, who was
motivated. And then the people around me,
they really recognized me and helped me grow and they wanted
to invest in that. So local government, if you're
having trouble getting work, I highly recommend doing that.
You don't want to have ACV full of it, but if you can start
(10:02):
there or even do an internship there, you will get much more
value than you would say, for example, central government and
saying that consultancies, if you want to go down that part
and you need the interim program, that's great.
But of course, that's very competitive.
So maybe start looking at local government options.
Example here is you're brought in to map a process maybe, and
(10:25):
suddenly you're facilitating workshops, running the business
case and helping test the protocol type.
And that was very, very much what I got to do.
And to be honest, you left your own devices because there aren't
many people managing you and there's so much to do.
So I got to do some amazing things. the BA tip here is be
clear on your role, but be willing to flex, OK?
You're not going to. You can't specialize in smaller
(10:49):
local councils in the UK, Different massive, London huge.
But just make sure you document and you communicate as you go
and make sure people do know what you're doing, even if
they're not asking because they're so busy #5 is that the
tech landscape is a patchwork. So it's not a place where hack
ticks get their drink. But they typically involved in
(11:13):
some of these projects. Councils typically have aging
systems, custom build off the shelf or vendor lock in.
Especially for local government,it's so regulatory that you
need, they really work with external vendors.
You never really see a an in house product that's managing
all those different various systems.
(11:34):
And those are big players. They move slowly, they charge a
lot. There's a lot of opportunity in
the local government space to dothings better.
Integration is often the most expensive and time consuming
part of the project and I put that into my notes here because
it's so true. I mean, we had a system, it was
called Authority Civica Authority.
(11:56):
They live, they exist both in Australia and the UK, what they
did back in the day and they pretty much in Australia, they
have a lot of the local government game.
And to be honest, New Zealand, Australia legislation is not far
off each other. They came to the New Zealand
market and to be honest, we wanted to integrate with the
system and it was using this oldInfomax back end had no
(12:18):
integration. So we had to.
When we did this national dog database, which was sending
local government dog registration data to central
government, we had to customize the hell of it.
Then another council had to do exactly the same thing and had
to pay for custom integration. There was no APIs, there was no
XML. So this just tells you the kind
(12:40):
of world you live in when you work in local government and the
vendors are not necessarily great.
You need to connect the rates database, for example, to a new
self-service portal. It's hosted on Prem,
undocumented and written in Delfy.
That's a good example. I can think of another example
where I was trying to early days.
(13:03):
So this is quite a a few years ago now allow online payments,
which was quite a new thing, theonline payments to pay your
rates. And it became all too hard
because you need to obviously verify that someone was that
someone had chosen their right rates property.
We could do that all internally.We're going to send the amount
to the bank and we wanted them to have some metadata with that
(13:27):
to to reconcile that the money was for this particular rates
account. And it became all too hard
because technology just wasn't there to share that information,
even though, you know, a few years later that technology
exists and that's how you pay rates now.
Still not done great for local government.
I have to say. the BA tip here is always met technical
constraints early. Meet the IT team.
(13:49):
Know what you're dealing with before you propose something.
I mean, you're probably in the IT team to be honest if you're
ABA, but make sure that if there's an external party,
you're meeting with them as well.
Number six is that staff are overloaded.
There is never enough hours in the day when you work in local
government. They are stretched.
(14:10):
Then your project, probably 1 of10 things they're juggling.
They have probably done this project before, but and it's
failed or stopped and there's probably 5 people asking them
the same question. What you find in local
government, which you find in all organizations, but
specifically local government, is that you have a few Drifters
and you have a few key people that run the place and they are
(14:32):
the knowledge teams. But they love that.
OK. And so personalities start
developing that you rely on themfor a lot of IP.
You need to reduce, not add to these people's burden.
And you need to keep things simple and you need to build
rapport with them. An example might be you're
running full workshops in a weekwith the consent building
(14:54):
consents team or, or resource consents team burnout kicks in
and you lose them halfway, right?
That happens a lot. The tip here is to design your
elicitation and validation sessions below destruction.
You use pre work, a lot of pre work asynchronous feedback and
empathy and maybe do one-on-one interviews if you can, but it'd
(15:16):
be great to get them all in a room for at least one session.
The number 7 is that change management is critical.
Many council staff have been in the role for 10 years plus.
It's they've chosen the role fora reason.
It's probably close to home, they probably care about the
area. It's pays below the average wage
(15:37):
probably or you know, average wage for the role they do.
But they enjoy it and change is hard.
We've always done it this way isreal and sometimes valid.
And you do get a lot of what black box thinkers and local
government was really hard to move them on.
(15:58):
My team might refuse to use a new CSCRM system and you include
two legacy fields that they still rely on and then it
switches them. Even though those two fields
don't really do anything makes it might be enough to make them
feel a part of the process. You need to really change
(16:20):
management and like government'sreally important.
If you're going to pay for someone in your team, change
manager would be great. You need to partner with them.
You need to map impacts to role and you need to bike change into
your BA artifacts and it's not enough afterthought in local
government. You really need to be hot on
change management #8 is that thecommunity is a stakeholder, even
(16:46):
when they don't know it. Ratepayers are the ultimate end
users, even if they're not sitting in your workshops.
Accessibility, quality, transparency, how you know who's
paying for what, where their money's going, must be baked
into every decision. An example here is a payment
system upgrade. Improves internal process but
(17:09):
removes the pay and installmentsoption used by low income
ratepayers. Right and you need to consider
them. You can use personas that
reflect real community segments.Migrants, elderly, digital
literate people. You know there's all sorts of
people people that just want things done.
(17:29):
Don't design for council staff. Please do not do that.
Other story here. When I worked in there as a
rates property card, I got called up about from an elderly
lady who had seen that the stadium that the council was
building would mean a rate increase for her.
(17:50):
OK, that she she realized that she was going to pay more rates.
And so I worked out exactly how much that was at the same time
as talking to this lady, and shevented her frustrations to me
about why was she paying for a stadium she would never use.
I worked out exactly how much she was paying each year towards
that initiative, which was of course a community initiative
(18:12):
that she didn't think she was getting value from.
I talked about the events that were on at the stadium that
weren't well marketed to her andthere were things that were
outside of the rugby that she wasn't interested in.
Rugby union is a huge sport in New Zealand and what they
actually had at the stadium thatweren't advertised, especially
(18:32):
to her demographic, was the factthey had marching, they had some
other events that she actually really enjoyed.
And I explained that she could actually get a free bust there.
So I was able to convince her that she did get value out of
the stadium and she didn't thinkso.
And I didn't talk about indirect, I talked about direct
benefits here. And, you know, that wasn't my
(18:54):
job, but as a, as a member of the council, it was my job to
kind of let her know that she was getting some value out of
this investment. And she may, I may not have
found anything she was interested in, right.
But what was interesting is I worked out she was paying a cent
more each year towards the stadium.
(19:15):
It's part of her bill. And by explaining that to her,
she had a nice conversation. She got value from it.
I distinctly remember it becauseshe was happy when she left the
conversation with me. So the community is a
stakeholder even when they don'tknow it or know where their
money's going #9 documentation is actually a deliverable.
(19:36):
Local government councils often require detailed documentation
for audit, public records, future use.
Councils get hit with Public Information Act all the time, so
they have to disclose information about decisions.
And your name will be all over it.
Good artifacts, bonus, they are the backbone of local
(19:56):
government. So you need to do it well.
You need things like vision control.
You need to make sure that you're public thing.
But this is the working copy. This is the public copy.
Records management is key. You might be asked to hand over
the BA plan, data model, workshop notes, decision log,
even though it was agile, OK andright?
(20:17):
Like you're not the tippers, right?
Like you're not. The only one who's going to be
supporting this in 12 months because you probably won't be
and and that document may be released publicly.
That is the case in central government to some degree, but
not really local government. Much worse #10 is your work
(20:38):
supports real communities. The systems you analyze can have
an impact on how someone gets a building permit right to build
their dream home. Books are venue applies for
funding. Local government work is really
glamorous. It really is glamorous, OK, but
(20:58):
it's hugely meaningful and you will know someone in the
community that you're helping. You can improve the job
registration process right for registering your dog.
And you can make it easier for 10,000 households in a day and
cut telephone call volumes in half. the BA tip is go talk to
frontline customer staff, work on the frontline, ask for it as
(21:21):
part of your employment contractto actually experience once a
month on the phones for half a day.
They know where the real problems are and I'd love that
someone finally asked. Working in local government
teaches you patience, humility and systems thinking.
It's a sector where the stakes aren't about profit, they're
(21:43):
about Community Trust, service delivery and public good.
And if you want to grow as ABA and develop your kind of
delivery skills, it's a great place to start your career.
If you want to have a real impact for real people, this is
the space to do it. Share this with someone working
in council or thinking about making the leap or getting into
(22:06):
business analysis and keep asking better questions.
Today we're getting into a spaceI know well, local government,
or if you like regional government, or in the case of
America it would be state government.
It's one of the most misunderstood environments for
BA. People assume it's all slow
(00:21):
process and red tape, but the truth is it's where the real
people centered systems get built.
From DOB registration to building consents to community
funding, local government touches nearly every citizen.
So here are 10 things every BA needs to know about working and
(00:46):
local government. The Better Business Analysis
Institute presence, the Better Business Analysis podcast with
Kingsman Walsh. One of the first jobs I ever had
was actually a rates clerk, rates and property clerk at
(01:07):
Hamilton City Council here in New Zealand.
Nothing to do with it really, but we used an ERP system.
We rated properties. The city was growing.
We, I dealt with property valuations, the rating of those,
whether or not they were commercial or residential,
whether or not a developer was developing a piece of land which
(01:30):
was wool, which then needed to be brought into the city.
And as the city was growing, we needed to kind of keep an eye on
that because there was some sneaky rules where the rates
categorization wouldn't change within a year.
So one time there might have been a piece of land that was
just next to a property development area and then within
(01:54):
the year that would all be new properties and that developer
would save a year in rates and residential rates only playing
rural. So there was a whole lot going
on with that. And this was, I kind of got to a
senior position there maybe within maybe a year and a half,
two years. And then I got a role upstairs
(02:15):
in the IT area, starting as a systems analyst.
And so I spent quite a bit of time in this local government
environment in Hamilton to a position where I left as kind of
a more as ABA before going overseas.
Now also when I arrived in London, which was my first
(02:37):
destination on my kind of overseas experience, but it was
more than that, it was seven years.
I was lucky enough to have a British parents so I had a
British passport and I could go to Europe and Britain.
And I first got a job there at Hackney Borough Council, which
is one of the large councils in London.
And it's the area where the London Olympics happened a few
(03:01):
years later. It was quite an area that was
getting gentrified, which means it was turned hit from a kind of
a low income area to kind of a, a middle class area through
investment, through, you know, getting rid of council flats or
developing them, you know, adding more parks and so forth.
(03:22):
It's a huge council and I workedthere for a while, so this comes
from my experience working within the local government
sector. I also have friends who work in
this area and I wanted to give you these 10 things that every
BA needs to know about working in local government.
(03:42):
Number one, it's around the factthat you're delivering services,
not products. OK, so most BAS and councils
support public services, not commercial product lines.
It's a completely different mindset.
The outcomes are regulatory compliance, community well-being
(04:02):
and accessibility and growing you know your local community.
An example here might be you're building a system for managing
library memberships. It doesn't need to drive sales,
it just needs to be usable by every age group in the
community. And I recently went to the
(04:24):
Wellington Library in the central area of Wellington.
I live in the Lower Hut area, which is a different council,
and I used the library facilities to check out startup
book and it was so easy. To be honest, the customer
experience in that library was far superior to most businesses
(04:47):
that I visit. So they got a big tech for
usability there. the BA tip hereis that you need to anchor your
requirements in service outcomeslike fairness, use of ease,
efficiency for right payers. There's a few different dynamics
there. It's not a product world #2
(05:07):
governance and process rule the day.
Everything is policy driven. That's why they exist and
they're in a microscope scope for that in terms of they don't
spend rates payers money effectively they are in trouble.
When it's in the front of the news.
You can't just move fast and break things like a startup
world. It's on the other end of the
spectrum. Change must often go through
(05:31):
governance groups, public consultation, elected officials,
you get the idea. The example is you propose
changing a parking permit process.
Council policy requires community feedback, formal sign
off before being rolled out. OK, so it's not like the
commercial world where you just do it and you test it and the
(05:51):
customers drive that. the BA tipis you need to include
governance checkpoints in your agile BA plan from the Better
Business Analysis Institute fromday one.
You won't speed things up by ignoring them.
So you just need to know that the pace is a little bit slower.
It's not and like slow like central government, which is a
(06:12):
little bit different because of hierarchy.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
But local government has a lot less people.
So the hierarchy hasn't grown. That's not necessarily the case
for say, Hackney Borough Council, which was so big.
The province is so big within orthe regional area is so big
within London. It became almost the size of
central government here in New Zealand and in the UK.
(06:36):
And this is, this will be the case for the States and, and the
states you live in, but you probably have councils below
that. They took care of a much more
services than central government.
So in New Zealand we're very small and our central government
takes care of, you know, fundingfor hospitals, for example.
(06:57):
I know you don't really have a public health system in the US
too much, but in New Zealand andin the UK, it's public.
So it's free to go to a hospitalif you, if you desperately need
it and you know, you pay a smallamount to go see a doctor.
So that was handled by central government.
Whereas in the UK, things like education, the school system,
(07:21):
which is housed by central government, in New Zealand,
health and hospitals were lookedafter at that local level.
And that will probably be the case in America, I imagine #3 is
funding cycles shape everything.So budgeting and local
government often follows annual and long term plan cycles.
(07:44):
You see them published. They they are under public
scrutiny more than most projectsmay pause or strength or shift
scope based on funding availability or even election
cycles. So a bit like again, central
government, but to be honest, these are central government
(08:04):
usually will accept previous government's policy.
They've already invested a lot local government.
It's not the case they they seemto change much faster.
An example might be a customer portal with scope for 12
features or 12. You know, services service
offerings that budget cuts mean you're now delivering only four
and the rest are pushed to year 3 or maybe not done. the BA tip
(08:29):
here is that you need to define a minimum viable scope early.
So not a minimum viable product,but what is the scope that must
be done? And take everything else with
cost benefit priority levels. The cost benefit specifically,
not internal priority like you would with a corporation and
expect reprioritization. It will go up to a council level
(08:54):
#4 which is the point I was making earlier is that you wear
10 hats. Many councils don't have large
specialist teams. BAS are often the UX, the
tester, the PM support, even comps.
And I found the next point. It's a brilliant training ground
if you're adaptive. So I would say that the reason
(09:17):
I'm quite flexible, adaptable, and the reason I've been so good
in the private sector is becauseof the the early grounding I had
in the public sector, specifically local government,
not government, not central government.
In the role in local government,I wasn't just the BA, I was the
systems analyst, I was the application support analyst.
(09:40):
I rolled out, I did training, I did VoIP phones, I helped in
project coordination. I did everything.
And it was perfect for someone who was quite young, who was
motivated. And then the people around me,
they really recognized me and helped me grow and they wanted
to invest in that. So local government, if you're
having trouble getting work, I highly recommend doing that.
You don't want to have ACV full of it, but if you can start
(10:02):
there or even do an internship there, you will get much more
value than you would say, for example, central government and
saying that consultancies, if you want to go down that part
and you need the interim program, that's great.
But of course, that's very competitive.
So maybe start looking at local government options.
Example here is you're brought in to map a process maybe, and
(10:25):
suddenly you're facilitating workshops, running the business
case and helping test the protocol type.
And that was very, very much what I got to do.
And to be honest, you left your own devices because there aren't
many people managing you and there's so much to do.
So I got to do some amazing things. the BA tip here is be
clear on your role, but be willing to flex, OK?
You're not going to. You can't specialize in smaller
(10:49):
local councils in the UK, Different massive, London huge.
But just make sure you document and you communicate as you go
and make sure people do know what you're doing, even if
they're not asking because they're so busy #5 is that the
tech landscape is a patchwork. So it's not a place where hack
ticks get their drink. But they typically involved in
(11:13):
some of these projects. Councils typically have aging
systems, custom build off the shelf or vendor lock in.
Especially for local government,it's so regulatory that you
need, they really work with external vendors.
You never really see a an in house product that's managing
all those different various systems.
(11:34):
And those are big players. They move slowly, they charge a
lot. There's a lot of opportunity in
the local government space to dothings better.
Integration is often the most expensive and time consuming
part of the project and I put that into my notes here because
it's so true. I mean, we had a system, it was
called Authority Civica Authority.
(11:56):
They live, they exist both in Australia and the UK, what they
did back in the day and they pretty much in Australia, they
have a lot of the local government game.
And to be honest, New Zealand, Australia legislation is not far
off each other. They came to the New Zealand
market and to be honest, we wanted to integrate with the
system and it was using this oldInfomax back end had no
(12:18):
integration. So we had to.
When we did this national dog database, which was sending
local government dog registration data to central
government, we had to customize the hell of it.
Then another council had to do exactly the same thing and had
to pay for custom integration. There was no APIs, there was no
XML. So this just tells you the kind
(12:40):
of world you live in when you work in local government and the
vendors are not necessarily great.
You need to connect the rates database, for example, to a new
self-service portal. It's hosted on Prem,
undocumented and written in Delfy.
That's a good example. I can think of another example
where I was trying to early days.
(13:03):
So this is quite a a few years ago now allow online payments,
which was quite a new thing, theonline payments to pay your
rates. And it became all too hard
because you need to obviously verify that someone was that
someone had chosen their right rates property.
We could do that all internally.We're going to send the amount
to the bank and we wanted them to have some metadata with that
(13:27):
to to reconcile that the money was for this particular rates
account. And it became all too hard
because technology just wasn't there to share that information,
even though, you know, a few years later that technology
exists and that's how you pay rates now.
Still not done great for local government.
I have to say. the BA tip here is always met technical
constraints early. Meet the IT team.
(13:49):
Know what you're dealing with before you propose something.
I mean, you're probably in the IT team to be honest if you're
ABA, but make sure that if there's an external party,
you're meeting with them as well.
Number six is that staff are overloaded.
There is never enough hours in the day when you work in local
government. They are stretched.
(14:10):
Then your project, probably 1 of10 things they're juggling.
They have probably done this project before, but and it's
failed or stopped and there's probably 5 people asking them
the same question. What you find in local
government, which you find in all organizations, but
specifically local government, is that you have a few Drifters
and you have a few key people that run the place and they are
(14:32):
the knowledge teams. But they love that.
OK. And so personalities start
developing that you rely on themfor a lot of IP.
You need to reduce, not add to these people's burden.
And you need to keep things simple and you need to build
rapport with them. An example might be you're
running full workshops in a weekwith the consent building
(14:54):
consents team or, or resource consents team burnout kicks in
and you lose them halfway, right?
That happens a lot. The tip here is to design your
elicitation and validation sessions below destruction.
You use pre work, a lot of pre work asynchronous feedback and
empathy and maybe do one-on-one interviews if you can, but it'd
(15:16):
be great to get them all in a room for at least one session.
The number 7 is that change management is critical.
Many council staff have been in the role for 10 years plus.
It's they've chosen the role fora reason.
It's probably close to home, they probably care about the
area. It's pays below the average wage
(15:37):
probably or you know, average wage for the role they do.
But they enjoy it and change is hard.
We've always done it this way isreal and sometimes valid.
And you do get a lot of what black box thinkers and local
government was really hard to move them on.
(15:58):
My team might refuse to use a new CSCRM system and you include
two legacy fields that they still rely on and then it
switches them. Even though those two fields
don't really do anything makes it might be enough to make them
feel a part of the process. You need to really change
(16:20):
management and like government'sreally important.
If you're going to pay for someone in your team, change
manager would be great. You need to partner with them.
You need to map impacts to role and you need to bike change into
your BA artifacts and it's not enough afterthought in local
government. You really need to be hot on
change management #8 is that thecommunity is a stakeholder, even
(16:46):
when they don't know it. Ratepayers are the ultimate end
users, even if they're not sitting in your workshops.
Accessibility, quality, transparency, how you know who's
paying for what, where their money's going, must be baked
into every decision. An example here is a payment
system upgrade. Improves internal process but
(17:09):
removes the pay and installmentsoption used by low income
ratepayers. Right and you need to consider
them. You can use personas that
reflect real community segments.Migrants, elderly, digital
literate people. You know there's all sorts of
people people that just want things done.
(17:29):
Don't design for council staff. Please do not do that.
Other story here. When I worked in there as a
rates property card, I got called up about from an elderly
lady who had seen that the stadium that the council was
building would mean a rate increase for her.
(17:50):
OK, that she she realized that she was going to pay more rates.
And so I worked out exactly how much that was at the same time
as talking to this lady, and shevented her frustrations to me
about why was she paying for a stadium she would never use.
I worked out exactly how much she was paying each year towards
that initiative, which was of course a community initiative
(18:12):
that she didn't think she was getting value from.
I talked about the events that were on at the stadium that
weren't well marketed to her andthere were things that were
outside of the rugby that she wasn't interested in.
Rugby union is a huge sport in New Zealand and what they
actually had at the stadium thatweren't advertised, especially
(18:32):
to her demographic, was the factthey had marching, they had some
other events that she actually really enjoyed.
And I explained that she could actually get a free bust there.
So I was able to convince her that she did get value out of
the stadium and she didn't thinkso.
And I didn't talk about indirect, I talked about direct
benefits here. And, you know, that wasn't my
(18:54):
job, but as a, as a member of the council, it was my job to
kind of let her know that she was getting some value out of
this investment. And she may, I may not have
found anything she was interested in, right.
But what was interesting is I worked out she was paying a cent
more each year towards the stadium.
(19:15):
It's part of her bill. And by explaining that to her,
she had a nice conversation. She got value from it.
I distinctly remember it becauseshe was happy when she left the
conversation with me. So the community is a
stakeholder even when they don'tknow it or know where their
money's going #9 documentation is actually a deliverable.
(19:36):
Local government councils often require detailed documentation
for audit, public records, future use.
Councils get hit with Public Information Act all the time, so
they have to disclose information about decisions.
And your name will be all over it.
Good artifacts, bonus, they are the backbone of local
(19:56):
government. So you need to do it well.
You need things like vision control.
You need to make sure that you're public thing.
But this is the working copy. This is the public copy.
Records management is key. You might be asked to hand over
the BA plan, data model, workshop notes, decision log,
even though it was agile, OK andright?
(20:17):
Like you're not the tippers, right?
Like you're not. The only one who's going to be
supporting this in 12 months because you probably won't be
and and that document may be released publicly.
That is the case in central government to some degree, but
not really local government. Much worse #10 is your work
(20:38):
supports real communities. The systems you analyze can have
an impact on how someone gets a building permit right to build
their dream home. Books are venue applies for
funding. Local government work is really
glamorous. It really is glamorous, OK, but
(20:58):
it's hugely meaningful and you will know someone in the
community that you're helping. You can improve the job
registration process right for registering your dog.
And you can make it easier for 10,000 households in a day and
cut telephone call volumes in half. the BA tip is go talk to
frontline customer staff, work on the frontline, ask for it as
(21:21):
part of your employment contractto actually experience once a
month on the phones for half a day.
They know where the real problems are and I'd love that
someone finally asked. Working in local government
teaches you patience, humility and systems thinking.
It's a sector where the stakes aren't about profit, they're
(21:43):
about Community Trust, service delivery and public good.
And if you want to grow as ABA and develop your kind of
delivery skills, it's a great place to start your career.
If you want to have a real impact for real people, this is
the space to do it. Share this with someone working
in council or thinking about making the leap or getting into
(22:06):
business analysis and keep asking better questions.
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