Interview: Mayor of Wollondilly Shire Council

Under-bridges drones, a one-stop portal and newspaper consultations.

Mayor Judith Hannan discusses how residents will soon be able access to e-services like hospital waiting times, weather and road conditions through a one-stop portal.

What is your vision for Wollondilly?

Wollondilly is a peri urban area with 16 towns and a large footprint. While we have a population of 47,000 we also have many farms and supply a lot of the fresh food to the Sydney market. My vision is to have better infrastructure for this peri urban area while maintaining its rural outlook.

What is your top priority for 2017?

My top priority for 2017 is to improve the road infrastructure and to increase tourism. We have a special rate for improving the roads and bridges. We are also working on a regional all abilities playground at Warragamba. Warragamba has the dam that supplies Sydney water supply.

How will technology help?

Technology will help in various ways. We use drones to examine under bridges and to log road works.

It's tourism technology is a great tool using social media to market why our area is a beautiful place to visit.

How will you develop your digital services?

At the moment the connectivity in the area is not the best but NBN, a federal program is improving this.

What has been the greatest innovation from your civil service?

In the next couple of months it is my intention to try to work in alliance with a couple of other western Sydney councils to apply for a federal grant called Smart Cities to develop a site where people can get all of the information about the area in one place. It will have information such as waiting times at hospitals, weather reports and road conditions. This information on a different level will also be available to the service providers to see to inform their decision making.

How is the city using feedback from citizens?

We do community consultation through various means such as social media and more classical media such as newspapers.

What has been the biggest challenge that Wollondilly overcame in 2016?

In 2016 we had an election and we now have over half of our elected representatives as new and so we will be developing a new strategic direction.

What is the biggest area of spending for the region?

The biggest area of spending is roads as we have a large area to cover.

If I were to visit your city, what one place would you recommend?

If I was to visit Wollondilly I would have to visit more than one thing. I would visit the Heritage Centre, the Burragorang lookout and Trainworx.