I’ve been asked a lot about TechnologyOne’s AI offering, PLUS, since it was announced in October last year. Most of the questions start in a similar place. How does it compare on price? What does it actually cost to run? And increasingly, how well does it fit, architecturally and commercially, against other AI platforms? They’re good questions. But the moment you start pulling on PLUS, you’re analysing something slightly deeper than an AI product. You’re analysing the business model underneath it.

It has taken a while, but everyone is comfortable calling TechnologyOne a SaaS company now. They offer a form of cloud delivery, they have built into a subscription revenue business model, and they provide continuous updates. On the surface, it fits. But there has also always been a quiet mismatch sitting underneath both the architecture and the economics, and AI will increasingly expose it.

TechnologyOne doesn’t price like SaaS in the way the market now understands it. It anchors pricing to the economic footprint of the organisation (rateable properties), not the consumption footprint (users) of the system. That has allowed it to avoid the classic SaaS mechanics of seat expansion, licence optimisation, and user churn. It behaves less like a SaaS platform and more like a utility tied to the size of the council. That has allowed it to be stable, predictable, and highly effective in the ERP era.

The infrastructure architecture reinforces this position. Running on Amazon Web Services with managed environments is not the same as operating a fully shared, multi-tenant runtime. Platforms like Salesforce and ServiceNow are designed to share everything except the data. That’s what allows them to align product, pricing, and scale so tightly. TechnologyOne sits somewhere different. A single code line, delivered as a service, but with enough separation in the environment to justify a different economic model.

None of this is a flaw. If anything it explains their success both in the customer and equity markets. In fact, it even explains something more important. It explains why they haven’t had to change. Local government is a market defined by stability, low risk tolerance, and slow structural change. TechnologyOne’s model has been almost perfectly tuned to that reality.

They’ve captured stable customers and delivered predictable growth by leveraging high switching costs. It has allowed them to modernise delivery in their own way and at their own pace, but without needing to modernise economics. They moved to cloud, adopted global SaaS language, and evolved the product without fundamentally disturbing how company (i.e. investor) value was captured. That has worked while the unit of value has remained stable. But now AI is changing the unit of scale.

In a traditional ERP environment, system activity is a rough proxy for organisational size. More properties equals more transactions equals more staff interactions. You could price against the size of the council and be broadly aligned to the amount of work being done. But in an AI-driven environment, that link breaks.

A council with 10,000 properties could generate vastly different levels of system activity depending on how aggressively it adopts automation. One might use AI to assist staff at the margins. Another might automate entire decision pathways, compliance processes, and customer interactions. The difference in system workload is no longer marginal. It’s exponential. That creates a structural tension inside the current model.

Therefore if pricing remains anchored to properties while the volume of work being executed by the system increases dramatically, the cost to serve rises without a corresponding increase in revenue. That’s why the cost question about AI is so important. AI can pretty quickly stop looking like a margin enhancer and start to look like a margin risk. Not because the technology doesn’t work, but because the commercial model isn’t designed to capture it. That is, unless those costs are pushed on to the client.

This is why the shift we are seeing from vendors like Microsoft and ServiceNow and Salesforce is so important. Their pricing models are moving, however imperfectly, toward consumption signals like per-user copilots, per-workflow execution, and usage-based constructs. They are aligning to the unit that actually scales in an AI world. That unit is “the work”.

Which naturally leads to the question many are now asking. Can TechnologyOne partner its way through this? On the surface, it’s a compelling path. Let Microsoft, ServiceNow and others provide the high-frequency AI execution layer. Let TechnologyOne remain the trusted system of record. Integrate the two and move forward without disrupting the core model. And in the short to medium term, that works.

In fact, it’s already happening. In many cases, it appears to be driven by the customer base themselves, rather than centrally led by TechnologyOne. Councils are experimenting with AI well beyond PLUS. Whether that be through Microsoft layers, or automation through ServiceNow, or marketing or customer engagement through Salesforce, or even content coherence through Glean. All of whicvh give broad access to every LLM available in the market, at the pace of the market.

Meanwhile TechnologyOne continues to defend its anchor position in finance, regulatory, assets and core records. This is creating a clean conceptual split between systems that store the truth and systems that act on it. But while that split holds for a long time if architected by the client, it doesn’t hold forever in a partner model.

Because the system that sits in the flow of work becomes the one handling requests, and decisions, and the automation, and the interactions and inevitably becomes the centre of gravity. It begins to own the experience and shape the workflows and captures the operational data that increasingly defines value. It becomes obvious to everyone where the value lies.

Over time, the commercial fear is that the system of record risks becoming a dependency rather than the platform. So partnerships, in that sense, don’t resolve the tension. They do defer it, and in other cases, amplify it.

Regardless, the volume of work still increases and the cost to serve still rises. But the value created by that work begins to accumulate in the partner layer. Which means the conversation about PLUS, and about AI more broadly, cannot stop at capability or partnership but has to come back to the operating model.

TechnologyOne will continue to introduce AI capabilities. And it follows that every successful AI capability will increase the amount of work being executed by the AI system. In the current model, that increased activity has no natural economic expression (because TechnologyOne’s model doesn’t price activity). That creates a disconnect. System usage can scale rapidly, while revenue remains anchored to relatively static measures like the rate base.

In the short term, we see what’s happening now. AI modules drive an uplift in ACV and ARR at contract renewal time. But without a mechanism to price the underlying activity, that uplift risks being episodic rather than structural.

Over time, this puts pressure on both Revenue Per Customer (RPC) and Net Revenue Retention (NRR). Revenue per customer becomes even less reflective of actual system usage (broadly tracked today as module access), and expansion depends more on discrete pricing events than on organic growth in workload determined by cost.

That leaves two options. They absorb the increasing cost to serve, or introduce new charges to recover it. Neither is comfortable when undertaken as “make good” or “reckoning” provisions in the contract. Especially where pricing predictability has been a core tenet of the sector. But also in a market where competitors are aligning pricing more closely to consumption, it’s definitely not a position that holds indefinitely.

Which means the question is no longer whether TechnologyOne can “do AI”, we’ve already seen it can at some level. The question is whether its current model can absorb it. And that’s where the idea of “reinvention” starts to appear.

But this isn’t reinvention in the way people instinctively think about it. There will be no collapse of the current platform or a sudden pivot away from ERP. It can be something far more subtle, albeit more difficult. And that is realignment from how value is captured to how value is now created.

Because for most of its history, TechnologyOne has been able to anchor value in what a council is based on its size, structure and footprint. But AI shifts that anchor point. Value will increasingly sit in what the system does and the decisions it makes and the work it executes and the interactions it automates.

That shift doesn’t require TechnologyOne to stop being what it is. But it does require it to finally evolve and improve how it participates in that work. It could be a commercial model that introduces a second axis tied to usage or automation. Or a product narrative that moves from system of record to system of execution. And over time, an architectural direction that supports better higher-frequency, lower-friction work across the platform. So also improvements in the underlying content, service and identity ontologies.

Partnerships can help accelerate that journey by bringing capability and keeping TechnologyOne connected to the flow of work. But they are only a bridge, because ultimately, this is not a question of capability but one of realigning from pricing based on what a council is to pricing based on what a council’s systems actually do. That is why property-based pricing, which once looked like a perfect fit for the sector, now starts to look less like a strength, and more like a constraint on its future.

The important thing for councils to understand is that vendors will evolve because they have to. But councils don’t need to wait for that evolution to be complete. The ones that move early won’t just adopt AI faster, they’ll define where value sits in their environment before someone else does. And in relation to AI, that may be the most important decision of all.

Australia’s major banks did not voluntarily embark on large-scale customer identity remediation. They were pushed. Regulatory tightening around KYC and AML reframed customer data quality from an operational concern into a compliance risk. In doing so, it exposed how much institutional confidence had been placed in identity records that were never truly verified. The banks aren’t now just fixing UX. They are protecting their licence to operate. Think about that for a second.

While the public narrative centres on financial crime, terrorism financing, and systemic integrity, something more structural is occurring beneath the surface. Compliance is quietly converting identity data into hardened economic infrastructure. Data that survives sustained regulatory scrutiny becomes economically different. It can be relied upon and automated against and shared internally without qualification. And it reduces the cost and risk of every downstream decision that depends on it.

And today that matters beyond compliance. Verified identity is not just a regulatory obligation. It is a prerequisite for automation at scale. Without trustworthy records, delegated work collapses back into manual oversight. But with them, institutions can safely transition toward machine-assisted and agentic operating models.

In a recent discussion with one of the Big Four banks, I was told they are actively validating more than 1.3 million unique customer records. Not enriching them. Not optimising them. Simply validating. Addresses. Employment status. Proof of identity. Duplicate CRNs. Parallel identifiers created across legacy systems. Records that were considered “good enough” for years, but are no longer defensible.

These are institutions with deep technology budgets, mature analytics capability, and decades of digital transformation behind them. They have invested heavily. They have modernised repeatedly. Yet even here, identity foundations required remediation at scale.

So, if that is the position of Australia’s most heavily regulated, best-funded data environments, what does that imply for everyone else? Well, a great deal.

Let me make this far less abstract using my own personal experience.

Over several months my bank sent repeated requests for updated KYC information (primed by their own regulatory deadlines). I delayed. I was busy, and yes, slightly stubborn. But I was also hesitant because I knew the friction that was coming. I couldn’t remember my CRN. Password? Yes. PIN? Yes. Account numbers? Naturally. I’ve been a customer for decades. But the CRN, that single identifier, isn’t something someone needs on a day to day basis.

I tried and failed to recover it online. The website process instructed me to '“Please call this number.” Urgh. I opted to book an online appointment at the local branch, as much to transfer the inconvenience back to the organisation that had created it.

A bank employee then sat with me for roughly twenty minutes to satisfy compliance obligations. The interaction began with a simple question: “Why are you here?” Anyone who has spent time around agentic AI will recognise immediately this. It was textbook intent capture. The autonomous systems we are talking about today will be able to ask that question, instantly classify the request, and route the workflow without ever needing a chair. Instead, the process unfolded manually.

I explained that I was unsure of my CRN. I then provided basic identifying information. Then produced my passport. It was taken away and photocopied. I have submitted digital passport scans for foreign visa applications for years. Entire governments verify identity at national scale using digital processes. Here, a human inspected the document and made a copy.

I then signed a paper form. I updated my details, speaking while he typed. He retrieved my CRN and handed it to me. He then triggered a one-time password so I could re-enter and verify the same information inside my banking app. I typed it all again. Job done.

We can all agree that nothing in that interaction required complex human judgement. It was structured, sequential and deterministic. It was, in effect, an agentic workflow executed by people because the underlying identity data and orchestration layer were not sufficiently trusted to run autonomously1.

Now multiply that experience nationwide. If one million customers require similar service, and each interaction consumes twenty minutes, that equates to twenty million minutes. For a single institution. More than 330,000 hours. Roughly 160 full-time staff years. That’s the hidden cost of identity fragility.

Regulation can force the clean-up. But it is data inconsistency and orchestration immaturity that determine how painful that clean-up becomes. The regulatory stick is not creating the problem. It is exposing decades of accumulated identity drift. The institutions that complete this remediation properly will not simply satisfy compliance. They will harden their operating core and in doing so, unlock nonlinear gains. Because once verified identity is embedded at platform level, every workflow that depends on it becomes safer to automate, every delegated decision requires less oversight and every downstream interaction inherits trust.

The remediation cost, though significant, is incurred once. But the leverage compounds everywhere. Verified identity is not incremental improvement. It is an enabling condition for automation, delegation, and machine-scale trust.

If that is what identity remediation unlocks in banking, it is worth asking what the equivalent looks like in local government. Across Australia, the council Name and Address Register (NAR) underpins almost everything. Rates and property systems. Planning applications. Waste services. Animal registrations. Libraries. Customer request management. Infringements. Community services. It is the quiet spine of council operations. Yet in many councils, the NAR, or more accurately, the multiple NARs, sit in quiet disrepair.

Duplicate ratepayers. Historic land titles still attached to prior owners. Household members fragmented across systems. CRM records that do not reconcile with property data. Decades of manual overrides. Inconsistent address formats across applications. None of these are edge cases. They are structural artefacts of systems built for billing and statutory record-keeping, not for orchestration.

And yet there is increasing pressure for councils to now deliver seamless portals and real-time service coordination, better automate their workflows, and, if you don’t mind, now adopt AI-enabled assistance. Many voices in the sector speak confidently about digital experience yet far less about whether the identity spine beneath that experience is coherent, trusted, and platform-ready.

Whereas banks are being forced to confront identity integrity through regulatory mandate. Councils are not, which I think raises a harder question. In the absence of sector-wide enforcement, does identity remediation simply fall down the priority list? In my own experience, compliance budgets are approved quickly. Foundational data hygiene projects rarely are.

This matters more than ever now because Agentic AI and platform orchestration are not limited by intelligence. They are limited by data confidence. So without a validated citizen and property spine, automation just scales inconsistency. An AI assistant trained on duplicated identities does not fix the duplication. It accelerates the confusion and drives the customer into the front counter. A portal layered over fragmented records does not create seamless experience. It just masks fragmentation behind a digital façade.

And it’s not that it is not possible to achieve better right-sized outcomes. And the ambition for better citizen experience is definitely real. And the technology exists. And the sector talks confidently about transformation. But the NAR remains an unresolved architectural dependency. And this is where the uncomfortable truth sits.

Council CIOs and IT Managers cannot solve this alone. They can propose remediation programs. They can modernise systems. They can integrate platforms. But identity remediation at sector scale is not an IT project. It is a governance mandate.

Banks are not just cleaning millions of records because their CIOs and CTOs were ambitious, though of course many are. They are cleaning them because regulators made identity integrity a board-level risk. So until the civic identity spine is treated as a governance and risk issue, and not merely a system hygiene task, progress will remain incremental. So how do we move this forward?

If we want faster digital progress in local government, we need to reframe the Name and Address Register as critical infrastructure. Not IT. Not a back-office dataset. Not a legacy inconvenience. Critical civic infrastructure.

Councils understand assets better than almost any tier of government. They manage roads, bridges, stormwater systems, community buildings, parks and fleets through disciplined asset management frameworks. They track condition, depreciation, lifecycle risk and renewal schedules. They allocate capital to prevent failure. They plan decades ahead. Local government is, at its core, an asset portfolio manager. Now imagine if that same legislative discipline were applied to civic identity data.

It’s not such a bold step. Councils exist through state legislation. In most jurisdictions, asset management planning is mandated. They are required to demonstrate lifecycle planning, risk mitigation, renewal forecasting and financial sustainability across their physical asset base. The governance machinery already exists.

Imagine a state-level directive requiring councils to validate, reconcile and standardise their Name and Address Register over a defined period. Standardised address formats. Duplicate detection and remediation. Cross-system identity reconciliation. Clear ownership. Auditability. Executive reporting on data integrity metrics. Not as an IT uplift. As mandated asset stewardship.

It would not be glamorous. It would not generate headlines the way KYC has in banking (though it probably should). But it would create the conditions under which digital ambition could safely operate.

State governments already exercise oversight of councils in matters of financial sustainability and infrastructure risk. Extending that discipline to digital identity would not be radical. It would simply recognise that the civic identity spine now underpins service delivery as materially as roads and stormwater. The sector does not need another transformation slogan. It just needs the Name and Address Register treated with the same seriousness as a bridge.

Achieve that, and its even possible to see a little further down the orad. Across Australia, there is frequent discussion about councils sharing the cost of technology platforms. Shared ERP environments. Shared CRM. Regional system consolidation. The logic is understandable. Pooling investment appears efficient. Buying the same system sounds rational. And in principle, it is not a bad idea. But it is incomplete because systems do not create capability. Data does.

Two councils running the same platform with inconsistent, duplicated and poorly reconciled Name and Address Registers will not achieve interoperability. They will share infrastructure, but not integrity. The argument to “buy the same system” is easier to grasp. It is concrete. It can be tendered. It can be budgeted. It produces visible alignment.

But shared data discipline is harder. It requires governance alignment, common standards, reconciliation effort and executive mandate. It does not generate ribbon-cutting moments. But in practice, the capability of any shared system is determined by the quality of the data flowing through it.

A shared platform built on fragmented identity registers simply aggregates fragmentation at scale. If we are serious about shared technology services, then the logical precursor is shared identity integrity. Otherwise we are optimising the container while ignoring its contents.

What will not go away is the fact that, as citizens, we will constantly demand better digital engagement with our local authorities. Every new generation will expect faster responses. Better portals (and agents!). Coordinated services. Those experiences are built on identity integrity.

“Our” banks know that regulatory pressure accelerates the strengthening of that foundation. Our local governments probably do too and should not wait for a similar stick.

If councils are serious about AI, orchestration and modern digital experience, the transition must be led from the top, framed not as digital uplift, but as governance and risk management. Banking was compelled by KYC. Not because it was technologically elegant, but because it was institutionally undeniable. Boards understood it. Audit committees tracked it. Executives funded it.

Local government needs its own forcing function. One that reframes the Name and Address Register as critical civic infrastructure. And one that translates identity integrity into the language of risk and stewardship that non-technical leaders already understand, much as KYC did in banking.

Without that shift, digital ambition will roam the streets of an LGA near you. Visible, energetic, and politically attractive. All while the identity infrastructure it relies on remains untreated.

When a council hears that a new AI capability carries a licence fee of around $100,000 per year, the instinctive reaction is predictable. Is it affordable? Is it necessary? Is it defensible to ratepayers? Those questions are understandable. But they are also the wrong place to start.

In the Australian local government context, scale matters but it must be properly defined. That is because population size, service complexity, and rate base do not move in lockstep. A council with a population of 20,000 might reasonably be described as a city whereas a council with 20,000 rateable properties might not. But it may still be a significant regional centre, a fast-growing fringe council, or a large rural authority managing a dispersed population across a wide geography.

This distinction matters because councils are funded per property, while services are experienced by people. AI value sits somewhere between the two. When those measures are blurred, cost conversations drift and hesitation becomes sticky. It is also why vendors price by organisational scale. It is not out of generosity, but because the underlying economics demand it.

So before debating AI investment as “a lot of money,” the math needs to be normalised (all cost debates drift unless they’re normalised properly). Using $100,000 as a reference point shows how quickly per-property cost collapses as scale increases, regardless of whether pricing is flat or tiered.

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At this point, it is also important to place these numbers in the further context of existing tech investments.

Councils already accept a per-rateable-property cost for their core ERP platforms, typically somewhere in the range of $15 to $45 per property per year, depending on scale, module mix, and contractual structure. That cost is rarely debated in isolation because, after decades, the ERP is understood to be foundational. Against that baseline, an additional AI capability priced at around $100,000 per year looks very different.

At approximately 10,000 rateable properties, it adds around $10 per property per year on top of the existing ERP cost. By 15,000 properties, that incremental figure drops to around $6.70. At 20,000, it settles at $5. Beyond that, the marginal impact becomes progressively smaller. Approximately $3.30 per property at 30,000, $2.50 at 40,000, and around $2 per year for councils with 50,000 rateable properties.

Viewed this way, the question is no longer whether $10 per property is “a lot of money” in absolute terms. For some councils, it may represent a modest uplift on an already high ERP cost base. While for others, it could be a material increase of 25 per cent, 50 per cent, or even more. That variability matters and should not be ignored. The real question, however, is whether an incremental uplift of that order, relative to an already-accepted ERP baseline, can deliver measurable improvements in how work flows through the organisation and how residents experience council services. Framed properly, this becomes a value and design question, not a headline pricing debate.

This is precisely why vendors price by scale. Once costs are normalised in this way, the headline pricing debate largely dissolves. Even allowing for tiered models, the per-property burden quickly falls into single-digit dollars and, for larger councils, into background noise. At that point, the question is no longer affordability, but whether councils can extract even modest, repeatable value from the way work actually flows through the organisation.

And this is where the conversation often goes off course. While the per-property cost diminishes with scale, the underlying workload does not. Customer requests, regulatory enquiries, correspondence, and service follow-ups do not shrink in proportion to the rate base. In many cases, they grow faster. So while the cost becomes less visible, the operational pressure increases, and it is this mismatch that AI is meant to address.

AI is too often justified through internal productivity narratives. Faster drafting. Better summaries. Reduced administration. For example, HR efficiency is frequently positioned as a lead use case because it is familiar, controllable, and politically safe. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, under a PaaS-driven architecture, a reimagined corporate services model can deliver significant organisational value through better decision support, reduced friction, clearer accountability, and materially improved cost-to-serve across the enterprise. The problem arises when internal efficiency is presented as the primary value story for a rates-funded organisation.

While HR, finance, and corporate services matter enormously to how a council functions, they are not how residents experience council. Residents experience response times, clarity, follow-through, and consistency. When AI is justified almost exclusively through back-office gains, the connection between investment and community value becomes abstract, and the political-buyer argument weakens.

This is not a critique of corporate services transformation. It is simply a sequencing issue. Internal AI gains are real and important, but in a public-sector context they cannot carry the whole case on their own. The strongest AI strategies are those that improve internal capability and deliberately translate that capability into frontline service outcomes residents can see and feel. That is, where it is tied to the services P&L. If AI is going to earn its keep in a rates-funded environment, it must be applied where residents actually feel friction.

The highest-return workflows are also not sophisticated. They are the relentless “are we there yet?” pleas from the back seat. AI earns its keep not by inventing new destinations, but by giving everyone (staff and customers) a clear view of the journey. You know the questions:

“Where is my request up to?”
“Who is responsible for this?”
“What happens next?”
“Why did I receive this notice?”
“How long will this take?”

These questions generate enormous effort not because they are complex, but because they recur thousands of times a year across customer service, rates, planning, compliance, waste, roads, and facilities.

At that scale, small efficiency gains compound quickly. So saving thirty seconds per interaction across live, resident-facing workflows produces a return that dwarfs the original licence cost even at the smallest end of the scale. A three-to-five-times return is not ambitious. It is conservative. Yet many councils hesitate precisely here.

Instead of embedding AI into frontline workflows, there is comfort in quarantining it in the back office. Piloted in HR. Restricted to internal drafting. Treated as a novelty rather than an operational capability, twelve months later the conclusion quietly emerges that the value was unclear. The value was not unclear. The application was timid.

AI does not create value by existing. Like a financial derivative, it only generates value when it is anchored to an underlying asset. In this case, live workflows where volume and repetition provide the leverage.

Customer service. Request management. Rates and property enquiries. Regulatory correspondence. Field service updates translated into resident-ready language. These are the domains where AI will invisibly earn its licence investment many times over.

I think there is also a “sweet spot” where AI becomes almost impossible to argue against in local government. Somewhere between 15,000 and 40,000 rateable properties, the per-property cost drops low enough that the burden disappears, while service complexity remains high enough for compounding returns to take hold. That is a meaningful slice of the overall sector. At that point, the risk is no longer financial. It is organisational.

The uncomfortable truth is that at $5, or even $10, per property per year, AI does not need to be transformational to be worthwhile. It just needs to be used. Which is why the real AI question for councils is not “can we afford it?” but “are we prepared to change how work flows through the organisation?” In my experience, that is often a hard no (for reasons I’ve explore before). When the answer is no, no licence price will ever make sense. If the answer is yes, the return will arrive long before the debate finishes.

In the end, AI is not testing council budgets. It is testing council confidence. Confidence to stop hiding behind internal efficiency stories. Confidence to apply capability where residents actually notice. Confidence to accept that the real risk is not spending a few dollars per property, but failing to extract even modest value from it. That is the cost problem local government actually needs to confront.

What’s also worth being explicit about is this. Everything above is the business case and the strategic positioning for AI in the sector. AI belongs squarely in every council’s five-year technology and service roadmap.

This precedes demo theatre and product selection and any vendor comparison exercise. The strategy is actually straightforward. AI must be deliberately applied to high-volume, resident-facing workflows where small reductions in effort compound quickly over time, and where the value is felt directly by the community rather than disappearing invisibly inside the organisation.

Framed this way, AI is not a discretionary experiment or a short-term initiative. It is a structural capability that can be planned, sequenced, and embedded alongside other long-term service and platform decisions. And, unlike ERP projects, in relatively fast time.

Once the cost drops to a few dollars per rateable property per year, the strategic question is no longer financial. It becomes organisational and architectural. The issue is no longer whether council can afford AI, but whether it is prepared to redefine what “the system” actually is (for the next 5- or 10-year investment cycle). What is clear is that the system is no longer the ERP alone. It is the broader architectural framework through which work flows incorporating core transactional platforms, PaaS capabilities, integration layers, data, and now AI as a native component rather than an add-on.

So the real question, then, is whether council is willing to deliberately change how work moves through that system, rather than simply bolting new capability onto old pathways. That is the strategy and it has never been clearer in over a decade. Everything else is execution, including the discussion about whether any given AI product can actually do these things well. Some can, very well. Others simply claim and obfuscate.

That’s where we left things in 2025.

There was a growing tendency in the market to blur these two conversations. Councils were told that because the business case made sense, the product must therefore be fit for purpose. That leap is dangerous and fed the hesitation and anxiety we also saw. Establishing that AI should be applied to certain workflows is a strategy decision. Determining whether a specific solution can support those workflows, with acceptable accuracy, governance, integration, security, and operational maturity, is a product and architecture assessment.

Confusing the two simply leads to justified purchases, weak adoption, and quiet disappointment. So be clear-eyed about the sequence. First define where AI must create value. Then test whether the technology can actually deliver it in those places. Strategy before tooling, not the other way around.

For paid subscribers, I’ve outlined 20 representative workflows where AI can quickly earn its keep in local government. If you’re trying to assess which technical solutions can genuinely support this level of capability in practice, rather than simply claiming to, I’m always open to a conversation.

And if you’re doing that assessment yourself, the test is straightforward. If an AI solution whether a point capability or a platform in its own right cannot be embedded into a material subset of these workflows, the issue was never price. It is relevance. If it can, then the original question of whether $100,000 is “a lot of money” becomes almost impossible to sustain.

A brief clarification: I’m well aware there are AI offerings in the local government market priced well below and well above this level, and I expect the inevitable “ours is much cheaper” responses. That is a different conversation. At that point, the question shifts from cost to architecture and specifically whether a tool is a point solution or a platform capable of supporting AI at scale across the organisation over time. That distinction matters far more than the headline price, which I’ve used here simply as an indicative benchmark to unpack the broader argument.

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Local government never wrote a strategy that said the ERP should define the entire technology environment. It happened quietly. Councils bought whole-of-council systems because they wanted a single suite to run finance, property, rating, regulatory and revenue. That decision made operational sense at the time. The problem is what came next. The idea drifted. A business consolidation decision turned into a whole-of-IT mindset. Over time the ERP stopped being one system among many. It became the architectural centre of gravity.

This shift was never really debated in public. We just talked about it amongst ourselves. Then it started to show up through procurement templates, and longer vendor relationships and a slow narrowing of the IT function’s ambition. Corporate Services took over decisions. The ERP suite became the defcto strategy. The vendor became the advisor. The integration partner became a rarely executed option. The IT department became a support unit for a product rather than a steward of enterprise technology.

The net result is that councils did not outsource IT. They just behaved as if they had. Without the contracts or governance that proper outsourcing requires.

That’s how today’s ERP vendors gained such strategic power in the sector. It was a power they were never designed to hold. Their products have since shaped decisions about infrastructure, integration, cybersecurity, data governance and customer service.

Many IT service providers faded into the background. Councils forgot why they needed them. Integration engineering, platform orchestration and data architecture are not functions ERP vendors ever performed well. They were not required to. And the councils simply stopped demanding those skills.

This legacy sits at the heart of the current digital transformation struggle.

Councils are trying to build modern platforms on top of an old worldview and years of underinvestment in some of the skills and services of core IT. Yes, they are adopting Microsoft cloud, Salesforce service layers, ServiceNow orchestration and API-driven ecosystems. But they are still thinking of IT as an ERP extension. The gap between the world where most organisations are headed, and the model councils have inherited is now too large to ignore.

In the changes we are seeing, it is not that a new group of vendors has appeared. They have been here the whole time. What has shifted is the way councils are (re)looking at them.

Once the old ERP worldview starts to fall away, the market becomes easier to understand. The same brands fall into different places when viewed through an architectural lens rather than a product lens.

In Forrester Wave or Gartner Magic Quadrant terms, the market itself is not new. The classification scheme is. This reclassification signals a deeper shift in thinking. Councils are beginning to see technology as an ecosystem that needs orchestration rather than a single system that needs administration.

The picture becomes clearer once the lens shifts. You can see which vendors operate across the full stack (Transformation Partners), which remain tied to the traditional ERP model (ERP), and which offer a modern cloud alternative (Challengers). And with this different perspective comes a different understanding of where each one fits in the future of local government technology.

1. The first group, Trasformation Partners, really sit in a different part of the market. They are not defined by an ERP suite, even where they may offer one. They are system integrators that bring software capability into the transformation process and can operate as long-term technology partners rather than suite providers. Datacom, Oracle and Fujitsu sit in this category, alongside others such as Deloitte and KPMG who work in similar roles. In some cases, including Datacom, this group may also carry a local government ERP product, but the software does not anchor their market position. Architecture does. And while longevity exists across all three categories in local government, it signals something different here. ERP vendors endure because they are embedded and often own the transactions. Challengers endure by remaining relevant within a defined scope. Transformation Partners endure by supporting thier clients to survive change. They do this by working across applications, platforms, cloud infrastructure, integration and managed services. Their performance is also revealed over time, rather than at the point of sale. They are exposed to shifting architectures, changing vendors and evolving operating models. Their continued presence depends on their ability to adapt rather than their ability to lock in. That distinction matters in a market that is now organising itself around ecosystems rather than suites.

2. The second group still represents the ERP worldview that shaped local government for the last generation. TechnologyOne. Civica. Infor. Their approach was built for a period when the safest answer was to consolidate everything into one suite and manage one primary relationship. That made sense when councils wanted stability rather than knowing they need more architectural flexibility. It solved the problems of its time. But it also set the boundaries of how councils understood technology and what they were prepared to tolerate. These products were never designed for an environment defined by integration, orchestration or data flow across many platforms and they have usually been sold to executive roles, not IT buyers. They remain strong incumbents because they are the foundational systems of record for so many councils. They simply hold a position that reflects an earlier period in the sector’s digital development. When councils continue to centre their strategy around these suites they often recreate the old world inside the new one. The technology changes but the operating model does not. The result is a modern interface wrapped around a legacy mindset. They are still very important, in context.

3. The third group contains the modern challengers like MAGIQ and CouncilFirst. They sit outside the old ERP tradition but they are not system integrators either. Their value comes from offering councils a more contemporary business system footprint without requiring a shift into the scale and complexity of global platform ecosystems. MAGIQ’s current suite reflects a long period of rebuilding and reinvestment after the acquisition of several legacy products. The portfolio today is more cloud aligned and more extensible than it once was, but that position has been achieved through patient redevelopment rather than a single clean build. CouncilFirst, by contrast, enters the market with a clearer cloud starting point and a tighter architectural story. Both give councils a way to modernise and reduce dependency on traditional ERP suites, though they arrive at that outcome through different paths. They fill the space between the legacy worldview and the broader transformation models now taking shape. These vendors don’t claim to be PaaS providers like Salesforce and Servicenow, and that clarity helps them at this point. They focus specifically on the functional needs of local government and build contemporary on-demand products, with on-demand user licensing for those needs. They offer councils a way to break long dependencies on legacy suites without forcing a shift to enterprise platforms before they are ready. They fill the space between the old ERP worldview and the broader transformation models now taking shape.

| Vendor Group | Examples | Role in Architecture

| Transformation | Datacom, Oracle, Fujitsu | Full-stack, integration, platform

| ERP Vendors | T1, Civica, Infor | Traditional system of record

| Cloud Challengers | MAGIQ, CouncilFirst | Modular capable SaaS

This is where I think one vendor currently sits awkwardly between the groups. ReadyTech has acquired its way into a position that defies simple classification. Today, it is not a traditional ERP provider in the mold of TechnologyOne or Civica. Today, it does not hold the systems integration capability or architectural breadth of Datacom, Fujitsu or Oracle. Today, it is not a clean cloud SaaS challenger like CouncilFirst or Magiq. Today, it carries legacy from earlier products and the portfolio is too new to yet form a clear architectural story.

The result is a stack that appeals to some smaller councils yet lacks the cohesion needed for a modern platform strategy. This is a question of identity. Councils are beginning to choose ecosystems rather than collections of applications, and vendors without a defined position in that ecosystem find themselves harder to place.

ReadyTech sits in that unresolved space at a time when the market is actually becoming more structured and more segmented. Councils are moving into models that expect clear roles inside a broader architecture. ERP vendors cannot stretch into platform orchestration. Platform operators cannot shrink into ERP logic. Challengers cannot carry inherited complexity. So ReadyTech’s challenge is not capability, nor investment potential. It is alignment with the shape the sector is now taking.

This new framing also exposes the myth at the centre of the whole-of-council idea. The 20th century ERP-centric worldview created the illusion that the software provider was the natural owner of the technology agenda. It was never true.

The rise of PaaS and low-code platforms has made that illusion impossible to sustain. Integration matters now. Data pipelines matter. Identity matters. Interoperability matters. Service design matters. None of these sit inside a single ERP. They sit across many systems and require coordination by skilled partners.

This is why the Transformation Partner companies sit more naturally in the architectural direction councils are beginning to pursue. Their work spans several layers of the technology stack, so they occupy positions that fit the broader patterns now taking shape.

Councils have to move toward operating models that depend on several partners working within one strategy rather than a single product holding everything together. Don’t agree? Then how does the expanding application footprint make this unavoidable?

SaaS has made it easier to adopt new tools and the result is a larger and more complex environment than the old whole-of-council model ever anticipated. The irony is that this was always the logical destination. The sector grew its way into an ecosystem. It is only now beginning to see that it needs an ecosystem approach to manage it.

And this is the key point that starts to shape the path forward.

Local government simply avoided formal outsourcing while also growing dependent on ERP vendors in a way that resembled it. The difference today is that councils are starting to see the actual structure of their environment. They can now see the roles different companies play across the ecosystem rather than through the narrow lens of a single suite.

I am obviously only calling out a subset of vendors here. The focus is on those that sit at the centre of the whole-of-council market because they have shaped the way councils think about technology for more than a generation.

The broader ecosystem is much larger of course. Finance tools, planning systems, asset management platforms, CMS and CRM products, spatial solutions, rating management, governance applications and specialised tools like parking enforcement all play important roles in the digital environment of local government. They matter. They influence architecture. They carry operational weight. They simply sit outside the specific question this article is trying to resolve which is how the core vendors have been understood and how that understanding will continue to shift in the years ahead.

It also underscores just how razor thin the whole-of-council narrative has been, yet how effectively it has shaped the core of thinking across the sector. The simplicity of that message carried extraordinary influence. It pushed councils toward a worldview where one system was expected to hold the centre of everything. It is baffling in hindsight yet also a reminder of the strength of the marketing that sustained it. TechnologyOne’s communication of that idea has been truly world class and the sector has willingly carried it forward for decades.

So where to? Well i think the real question is not which vendors win the next round of procurement but whether councils will update the mental models that guide their choices. Strategic architecture is no longer optional. The technology landscape has already moved beyond the old worldview. Councils can move with it or carry the same untested assumptions into a new era.

Of course it will be a mix of both. But no sector, including local government, can stand still while enterprise application technology is shifting under its feet. The only choice is whether the shift is conscious or accidental.

Either way, 2026 is going to be a big year! And I look forward to working with many of you again. For my paid subscribers focused on local government tech procurement, read on to unpack why whole-of-council ERP RFTs no longer fit the market, and get in touch if you need some help.

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The local-government ERP market across Australia and New Zealand is much larger and more diverse than it appears at first glance. Across the two countries, more than six hundred councils operate with wildly different scales and technology needs. The top hundred are substantial organisations in their own right. These are large, complex technology consumers with multi-million-dollar systems and dedicated internal capability.

But beyond that top tier lies the overwhelming majority of the market. These are the SMEs of local government. These are the regional, rural and remote councils with small teams, tight budgets and limited capacity for disruption. And it is this long tail, rather than the metropolitan giants, that has shaped the character and behaviour of the ERP market for decades.

At this level, the ERP landscape has existed in a kind of quiet equilibrium, shaped less by strategy than by inertia. Nothing moved quickly, nothing broke loudly, and most councils simply stayed with the systems they had because staying put for under a hundred thousand dollars a year felt easier than confronting the cost, risk and complexity of change.

Vendors servicing this end of the market didn’t push too hard because they didn’t have the resources. And the idea of a regional tender cycle was as unlikely as a sudden population boom in the Nullarbor. Everyone simply lived with what they had, and while what they had was rarely good enough, it was predictable.

ReadyTech shattered that equilibrium.

What began as a confident consolidation play has become one of the most consequential market disruptions the sector has seen in years. Not because they set out to create disruption (though of course it did that), but because the act of trying to lock the market down has ended up stirring it awake.

Consolidation is usually intended to bring order, clarity and growth. It’s the kind of move that’s meant to settle a market, not stir it. But in this case, the immediate effect has been the opposite. Instead of settling, the market has begun to move. Once that happens, it rarely does it quietly. It’s a tight knit sector, and a re-evaluation that begins in one region quickly becomes a conversation across many, and the ripple effects take on a life of their own.

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The long tail of Australian local government which includes the shires, the regions, and the remote authorities working with minimal staff and maximal expectations, spent years inside systems like SynergySoft, Open Office, CouncilWise (PropertyWise) and the rest of the small-vendor constellation.

These products were built in a different era, shaped as much by the preferences and philosophies of individual developers as by formal product strategy. Over time they accumulated their own folklore. Passing from hand to hand and rewritten across technological epochs. From early proprietary frameworks, through the VB6 years, and eventually into the kernels of the modern platforms we see today.

Patches layered on patches, customisations handed down across IT officers like a set of inherited tools. The products became familiar in the way old houses are familiar. But that familiarity always sat alongside the fatigue of technical debt and the quiet knowledge that the foundations were ageing faster than the councils could ever adapt.

Many of these companies had essentially sidestepped the full SaaS re-architecting journey that today’s contemporary software vendors undertook over the past 15-years. Their platforms carried years of incremental adaptation rather than a ground-up rebuild for the cloud era. So when ReadyTech bought IT Vision in 2022, Open Office and Open Windows in 2021, and CouncilWise in 2025, it didn’t just acquire customer bases. It inherited a complex landscape of legacy technologies, long-held customer expectations, service anxieties and decade’s worth of unresolved architectural decisions. What looked like a consolidation play on the surface was, in reality, a massive integration and modernisation challenge beneath it.

From an analyst’s perspective, the goal of these acquisitions was to create a unified cloud pathway under the Ready Community banner. Great. But bringing several long-standing systems, architectures and deeply embedded customer histories into a single platform is a complex, multi-(multi)-year exercise. I think the gap between the long-term vision and the immediate product reality was visible to councils, and to analysts, from the outset.

The moment the consolidation became real, councils in South Australia and Western Australia found themselves exposed to a new kind of question. WA in particular, with its deep SynergySoft footprint, probably felt the tremor first. SA was close behind, shaped by its own mix of Open Office and CouncilWise installations.

Entire regions began to look at their systems not as fixed assets but as things that now demanded re-evaluation. In 2025, conversations that had been dormant, sometimes for decades, suddenly became urgent, and competitors immediately recognised the moment.

Vendors who had struggled for visibility in certain states found doors opening that had been shut for a generation. They moved quickly, not because councils were suddenly dissatisfied, but because the conditions for change had finally appeared. The shift created a window of opportunity, and the market did what markets always do when stability dissolves. It flowed into the space that uncertainty created.

This would not have happened without ReadyTech.

Councils in the smaller tiers rarely pursue ERP renewal unprompted. Their operating reality is defined by immediacy. They have limited staff, tight budgets, visible risks, and a constant pressure to keep services running with as little disruption as possible.

Technology is often framed as an essential cost rather than an enabler of transformation, which means the perceived return on a major systems overhaul rarely outweighs the effort required to deliver it. In environments like this, large-scale change doesn’t emerge organically. It takes an external jolt to surface the question, and that is precisely what happened here.

They were pushed into clarity by the uncertainty that supplier consolidation always brings. When a familiar vendor disappears into a larger structure, even if the intention is good, the relationship changes. It doesn’t matter if it is IBM or Salesforce or in this case ReadyTech. Customers want to know what comes next, when it comes, and how far away next actually is.

ReadyTech offered a paper vision in which everything converges into a single cloud platform. The vision was attractive, but the details and the timeline were not. A vision without specificity becomes its own form of disruption, because it requires customers to imagine the gaps for themselves. And when councils are already relying on the day-to-day performance of their incumbent system, that ambiguity doesn’t inspire confidence. It actually amplifies the sense that the future is being asked of them before the present is fully resolved. The more opportunities councils had to look at the unified future, the more they realised that much of it was still being built. And the more they realised that, the more they looked outward.

This is how MAGIQ found itself with an open door in regions that had resisted change for decades. The company has followed its own long arc of acquisition-based evolution, not unlike ReadyTech’s, and not without its own challenges, but the crucial difference is timing. MAGIQ arrives at this moment with a cloud ERP and solution portfolio that is largely coherent and deployable. In many ways, it is benefitting from the conditions ReadyTech created.

The simplicity of a platform that is fully formed and available now becomes a powerful antidote to the uncertainty that consolidation has introduced. CouncilFirst has found a similar opportunity, not by promising simplicity but by grounding itself in something even more reassuring. Microsoft. A D365 ERP looks less like a leap of faith in 2025, and more like an extension of the tools that councils already trust, with regional skills they have, in an environment they know.

None of this was inevitable. ReadyTech created the conditions. The consolidation strategy brought three very different ecosystems into the same gravitational field, but unity in structure has not translated neatly into unity in customer expectation. A SynergySoft council in WA has different needs to a CouncilWise customer in SA or TAS, and each differ again from the councils shaped by Open Office’s regulatory workflows. From what I have observed, each group was told it would be part of a bigger future without clearly seeing how their present would actually merge into it.

As soon as one council in a region began to reassess its position, its neighbours followed. Market testing is contagious. Tenders are even more so. Councils talk, especially in SA and WA, where the distances are vast but the community of practice is tight. A single reassessment in the Wheatbelt becomes a conversation across half the state. A moment of doubt in the Adelaide Hills reverberates along the Limestone Coast.

This is why South Australia and Western Australia became the epicentre of local government ERP movement in 2025, and why 2026 looks set for even greater disruption. These states held the highest concentration of the legacy systems that ReadyTech absorbed. When those systems were lifted under a new umbrella, the stability that once held them in place dissolved.

Once councils stopped looking at this as a technology review (an area where confidence is often low), and instead began reviewing something they understand intimately (risk, autonomy and future dependency), the logic changed.

For the first time in a long time they felt responsible for questioning the structures that would shape their future. Were they really bound to the systems they had? And the moment the conversation moved out of software features and into organisational control, the door opened for every competitor in the market.

The irony is that ReadyTech has done nothing wrong in strategic terms. Consolidation was always coming. And consolidation will continue. The long tail was never sustainable. Obsolesence has been marching closer every year. The sector needs modernisation, clarity and investment. ReadyTech tried to bring all three at once. But timing matters, sequencing matters, and executable roadmaps matter more than ever in a sector that has lived with legacy debt for a generation.

And so the hornet’s nest was kicked. Not because ReadyTech intended to provoke the swarm, but because the pressure of consolidation was applied before the structure beneath it had settled. The result is a market that is suddenly louder, faster and more liquid than it has been in twenty years.

MAGIQ, itself a slow burner over the last decade, is winning councils it never would have reached before. OST is entering conversations that were closed to it just a few years ago. Datacom has a message. Even TechnologyOne is finding fresh attention in places that once dismissed it as too large or too costly.

ReadyTech may still emerge stronger but that will only become clearer in 2026. It is worth noting that their share price (ASX: RDY) has fallen by roughly 25 per cent over the calendar year. That movement reflects the performance and market sentiment around the entire company, not just the Local Government practice where the IT Vision, Open Office, CouncilWise and Open Windows acquisitions sit. But it is a reminder that the broader consolidation narrative is still being digested by investors.

Whatever the reasons for the decline, it reinforces the point that councils should assess their own risk and dependency positions independently of how the market values the company as a whole. Because being publicly traded also introduces a different set of strategic pressures. Listed companies are required to balance long-term product integration with short-term financial performance, and that inevitably shapes how aggressively they can invest in unifying complex portfolios. Civica’s ebb and flow over many years is reflective of this kind of pressure.

It also means their product mix is not static. Acquisitions can be followed by consolidation, re-prioritisation or shifts in focus as the company responds to market conditions and shareholder expectations. None of this is unusual. But it does mean that 2026 is going to be a critical year for ReadyTech as councils re-evaluate their current state. This includes a clear understanding of the structural realities of a listed vendor, and the strategic adjustments that may yet still occur in this vertical over time.

The advantage of consolidation has been offset by the acceleration of choice for which they have been found unprepared (this year), because the fight now unfolding has very little to do with features on a brochure. It has become a test of trust, of whether councils believe the roadmap is real or merely aspirational, and of whether they can deliver consistency at scale (better than the companies they acquired), rather than promise it in theory.

It is about stability in regions where stability has always mattered more than novelty, and about whether a supplier can speak credibly to long-term data strategy in organisations that barely have the internal capacity to manage today’s demands. Above all, it is about platform alignment and the quiet politics of technology in environments where every resource is stretched, every decision carries weight, and every misstep is felt for years.

In the end, the real story is that this part of the local government ERP market didn’t wake up because it was hungry for innovation. It woke up because its sleep was disturbed. But it is definitely awake now.

ReadyTech didn’t simply trigger an upgrade cycle. In fact, had it left the landscape untouched, I doubt MAGIQ or CouncilFirst would be expanding as quickly into South Australia and Western Australia with the momentum they have today.

The consolidation forced councils to re-examine assumptions they had held for years, and that re-examination opened the door for competitors. Where inertia, not technology, is the mechanism holding everything in place, once a council realises it has options, the entire market changes.

What happens next is where the real tension lies. The decisions councils make from here will shape not just their systems. The implications reach far beyond product choice, touching questions of trust, capability, data, politics and the quiet realities of operating under relentless constraint.

Paid subscribers can read on to further understand what I think it means for the hundreds of councils faced with this decision, and the 100-day plan.

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For twenty years, the Australian local-government technology market was defined by stability. Not innovation. Not transformation. Stability. A handful of ERP providers held entrenched positions, councils cycled through the same replacement patterns, and vendors priced their products with quiet confidence that switching costs alone would do most of the defensive work.

TechnologyOne was the standout beneficiary of that era. A broad suite, accessible delivery motion, a maturing SaaS platform, and a customer base with limited alternatives. The company earned its premium ASX valuation because the environment allowed it. Low churn, predictable growth, and high margins built a defensible ANZ footprint.

But that world no longer exists.

And this shift exposes a deeper truth about TechnologyOne. It has always been a market leader in the ANZ local-government ERP space, but a laggard when measured against the global SaaS and ISV curve.

Within its niche, it has been the dominant incumbent for decades. But in a world now defined by platforms, ecosystems, and AI-native workflows, councils aren’t benchmarking their core systems against Civica or ReadyTech anymore. They’re benchmarking them against ServiceNow, Microsoft, Salesforce, and the global SaaS pattern-makers. The category has changed, and suddenly regional leadership is no longer the same as architectural leadership.

Over the past five years the gravitational centre of local-government technology has shifted. Albeit quietly at first, now more rapidly. And irreversibly. The ERP is no longer the centrepiece of the enterprise architecture. The platform is. The workflow layer is. The integration spine is. The AI-enabled service environment is. Councils are moving beyond monolithic system thinking and entering an era where capability matters more than modules, orchestration matters more than ownership, and outcomes matter more than suites.

This is the great decoupling. It is the loosening of ERP gravity and it has caught some vendors mid-stride.

TechnologyOne now finds itself navigating a transition at the exact moment the market it once dominated is fragmenting. Not collapsing mind you. Just fragmenting. The shift to SaaS-Plus is strategically sound but financially heavy because it front-loads delivery costs in a business that previously enjoyed the luxury of high-margin licence revenue. The company is still growing strongly, but it is a smaller software organisation (intenrationally speaking) facing the long, expensive part of a business-model transition without the decade-long cash reserves of the global platforms.

And the ground is moving beneath its feet.

Salesforce Public Sector Solutions is inserting itself into licensing, inspections, and citizen engagement workloads. ServiceNow, barely a footnote in the sector five years ago, is now fomenting customer service, regulatory workflows, and internal case management across councils. Microsoft and AvePoint have effectively captured the information governance and records landscape.

ReadyTech, newly consolidated through OpenOffice and CouncilWise acquisitions, is refirming for a push into property, regulatory, and rating workloads across the bottom third of the sector, while CouncilFirst, built entirely within the D365 platform, is moving with a clarity of purpose not seen in that portfolio for years.

Even Datacom is re-articulating itself around platforms, services, and outcomes rather than modules. And Civica, the vendor that has drifted in and out of competitiveness for decades, following periods of stagnation, under-investment, leadership churn, or customer dissatisfaction, is now rising again, because the structural shifts in the market have created openings that didn’t exist during the era of ERP monoliths.

This new ecosystem adds depth, competition, and architectural diversity, which naturally softens ERP’s old dominance. And even if you don’t buy that argument, the shift is significant enough to warrant some serious reflection.

In this environment, premium pricing for ERP requires more than historical position. It requires platform alignment. AI strategy. Integration maturity. Workflow extensibility. It requires a clear role inside a multi-system architecture where councils expect SaaS interoperability, PaaS capability, and the freedom to assemble their own service experience.

The margin pressure we now see in TechnologyOne’s financials, reflected in a 17% drop in share price yesterday1, is not the story. It is the signal. It is a symptom of a market recalibrating to the reality that local-government technology is no longer structured around a single vendor.

SaaS-Plus is not the problem. It is simply the cost of competing in a world where modern councils expect the implementation experience to be part of the value proposition. But when that model shift happens at the same time the sector is re-wiring itself around workflow platforms and AI-driven service layers, investors start asking harder questions.

Can a mid-sized Australian software company absorb multi-year delivery investment while global platforms target the same budget lines?

Can a legacy ERP maintain relevance in a market where the workflow engine, not the finance or rating or asset modules, defines customer experience?

Can councils justify premium ERP spend when the modern architecture is a federation of best-fit platforms with rich APIs and low-code extensions?

These are structural questions, not cyclical ones. The likely outcome is not collapse but correction. ERP will remain a very important part of the stack, but not the anchor. Councils will continue to modernise, but not around monoliths. Vendors will need to articulate interoperability, extensibility, and platform partnerships as clearly as they once articulated module roadmaps.

The winners in the next decade will not be those with the broadest suite. They will be those with the strongest gravitational pull towards the platforms that help councils orchestrate services, manage data, automate work, and integrate seamlessly with specialised line-of-business tools.

Local government has already shifted its centre of gravity. The procurement language has changed. The architecture diagrams have changed. The conversations with CEOs and CFOs have changed. The expectations placed on technology leaders have changed. A vendor can hold its place when it’s the sun. But not when the whole solar system drifts into a new region of the galaxy.

ERP is still in the room. It is just no longer at the head of the table. And that change, not yesterday’s share-price drop, is the story I’ve been tracking for nearly two years.

Last week, TechnologyOne unveiled PLUS, its new “agentic enterprise AI” platform1.

The launch was billed as a watershed moment for TechnologyOne and its customers, marking the introduction of a new intelligence layer that connects finance, HR, assets, and property data to surface insights, anticipate needs, and accelerate decisions.

For many in local government, that sounds like the breakthrough they’ve been waiting for. A smarter, faster, more connected back office. The promise is compelling, and what’s emerging in PLUS reflects the first practical form of agentic capability. That is, a system that can anticipate needs, surface relevant data, and complete process actions inside the ERP.

On the agentic AI maturity curve I wrote about a few months ago2, I’d place it somewhere between Level 1 (The AI Intern) and Level 2 (The AI Assistant): guided, context-aware, and task-capable, but still operating within defined system boundaries. It’s progress, just not yet orchestration.

The term “agentic” is everywhere in AI marketing right now, though most implementations are still early in that journey. True agentic systems act across workflows with a degree of autonomy and purpose. Others, including TechnologyOne’s PLUS, operate in the formative stages of that curve, where intelligence assists rather than orchestrates. Understanding that distinction helps set the right expectations and gives a clearer view of what TechnologyOne is offering its customers today.

PLUS is best understood as a large-language-model enhancement layer that brings conversational capability and guided execution to the TechnologyOne environment. It primarily lets users ask questions in plain language, retrieve structured information, and generate reports, summaries, or comparisons. Increasingly, it will complete routine actions such as approvals, requisitions, and updates. It’s designed to be intuitive and genuinely useful, turning ERP data into contextual responses and process outcomes.

That makes PLUS a conversational and assistive system rather than an autonomous one. From company material and early demonstrations, it doesn’t yet act across modules or execute workflows beyond defined boundaries, nor does it make independent decisions. “Human-in-the-loop” guardrails confirm its purpose as a safe, bounded layer for insight and task execution. In practical terms, it’s a smart, guided interface that helps users act more efficiently within the TechnologyOne system they already use.

That distinction matters for government leaders. A large-language-model layer can enhance how staff interact with data and complete everyday tasks, yet it doesn’t by itself reshape how the organisation operates. For that, a platform must progress to higher levels of the agentic maturity curve. At those stages the systems act, learn, and coordinate across domains rather than simply assist within them. Right now, PLUS sits between the first and second levels of that curve. It is capable, helpful, and safe, but not yet orchestrative.

This matters for councils because most still operate in fragmented data environments. Finance, assets, planning, people, and customer systems rarely align, whether the environment is best-of-breed or a single vendor suite. What separates maturity from disorder isn’t the number of systems or the promise of a single platform, but the capability to connect and properly govern them .

Integration discipline, not consolidation, determines whether data flows cleanly or ends up in spreadsheets and workarounds. The golden rule is actually pretty simple: integration capability, not system count, defines digital maturity.

A genuinely agentic system capable of reasoning across functional silos also relies on consistent data models, clear integration pathways, and mature governance. These are precisely the areas where most councils struggle today, not necessarily through neglect but because of structural realities that have built up over years like skill gaps, system changes and constrained investments.

No AI can fix those underlying problems. And a large-language model can’t reason its way through poor structure or inconsistent data. So if the foundations aren’t ready, the AI won’t clean the mess. Fragmentation, data quality issues, and broken integrations don’t disappear under an intelligence layer. They just surface faster (or not at all if the query times out).

Commercially, TechnologyOne’s strength has always been its positioning around simplicity. The company has carefully cultivated the idea of one vendor, one stack, and one update cycle. It is a message that has proven powerful in the local government market because it speaks directly to councils’ appetite for predictability, accountability, and local support. As a marketing narrative, it has been remarkably effective.

I think that positioning, though effective, sits uneasily with where enterprise architecture is heading in general but definitely in relation to AI. Agentic systems thrive on interoperability, not control. They work best when they can move freely across boundaries, connecting to platforms like Microsoft 365, Salesforce, or ServiceNow where critical parts of council’s operational activity either lives or is moving. That trend has long been visible beneath the surface, but it’s now unmistakable in the growing number of public tenders focused on remediation and transformation at the customer layer. And often through platforms outside their incumbent ERP providers.

That does not diminish TechnologyOne’s role as custodian of core ERP data. In fact it remains central to council operations. But as customer engagement increasingly takes place across other platforms, its irrefutable that their contribution must sit within a wider, more interconnected ecosystem.

With the release of PLUS, TechnologyOne now occupies the early stages between Level 1 and Level 2 on the agentic maturity curve. It can anticipate needs, surface data, and complete routine actions inside the ERP. That progress gives councils a safer, more guided way to interact with their information. For most customers, that’s the right place to be because it is secure, familiar, and focused on improving confidence before moving toward more open, orchestrated systems.

But to climb higher and become a genuine agentic platform, it will need the ability to open up. That means not just integrating with other systems, but federating intelligence across them so reasoning and context can flow between platforms. It could be as “easy” as partnering. At least, that’s the direction the leading agentic ecosystems are already taking.

And that’s the paradox. The same Power of One philosophy that built TechnologyOne’s success also constrains how far PLUS can evolve as an enterprise-wide agentic platform. Its strength in unification becomes a limitation when intelligence needs to operate beyond its own ERP dataverse. Remaining closed keeps them comfortable and successful at Levels 1-2. Becoming open could make them 10x the company they are today.

For now, and for most councils, PLUS will feel like progress. It will give staff a new, intuitive way to interact with data. One that doesn’t require new training, new governance, or new integrations. It will let managers query information in plain English and get instant answers.

It looks modern, it probably feels intelligent, and it can’t really break anything. Security has been at the core of the solution. That’s exactly why it will be attractive to their base. PLUS will deliver the appearance of transformation without the disruption that real transformation requires.

It will give leaders an AI initiative to announce. It is something tangible that staff can use, executives can demonstrate, and auditors can understand. But it won’t change how the organisation actually works. That’s a positive because local government really does not do change well.

In relation to data, the real challenge lies not in the presence of silos but in the quality of what sits inside them and the council’s ability to manage and connect that data across boundaries. In that sense, PLUS is a new way to see your data, not a new way to run your organisation, and that’s not a flaw. It’s an honest reflection of where most councils are today, and it remains valuable so long as everyone understands where this AI’s impact begins and ends.

Councils that mistake PLUS for an AI architecture shift risk overestimating its impact and underinvesting in the groundwork that true transformation requires. That is not good for anyone. The irony is that the work needed most (things like improving data quality, cleaning and reconciling information across systems, and building cross-platform governance) can already be accelerated through other forms of AI.

The real opportunity is to do both. PLUS provides a safer, more accessible way for staff to interact with data, while specialised AI tools can strengthen that data by profiling, cleansing, and mapping it so future intelligence layers have something trustworthy to work with. The councils that succeed will be those whose vendors, like TechnologyOne, help them mature along that path. Not just by adding visibility, but by enabling readiness. Ignoring that step risks building new visibility on top of old problems.

I think we can all agree that AI progress doesn’t happen all at once. Like every other technology adoption cycle we’ve lived through, it moves in stages. And that goes for the organisations buying the technology and the vendors selling it. As a technology analyst, I receive around half a dozen press releases and briefings each week from software companies entering the AI conversation. It has been non stop in this space for more than 12 months. A few recent examples help illustrate how differently each one is approaching the journey.

Epicor launched its AI solution earlier this year based on IBM’s Watson X platform. Their model combines a vertical AI layer for manufacturing and supply chain with a broader platform architecture capable of orchestrating multiple domains.

Dayforce have taken a different route, embedding small AI agents directly into HR workflows. It doesn’t claim to be agentic, because it isn’t. It’s a feature enhancement focused on measurable efficiency. That honesty keeps it grounded.

The big guns including ServiceNow, Salesforce, Microsoft and even Accenture and Google Cloud have gone further still, building hybrid agentic layers that operate (and govern) across multiple products and vendors. These are genuine AI platforms of interaction, not just enhancements or systems of record.

By comparison, TechnologyOne’s current positioning feels closer to Dayforce than to the platform models of Epicor, ServiceNow, Salesforce or Microsoft. That’s not a weakness, it’s simply a stage. What matters is context. Council buyers need to understand which stage they’re stepping into, and whether it aligns with where they intend to go next.

So let’s bring this all together.

Before councils start planning around PLUS, it’s worth pausing to understand what’s actually being offered. Where does this new intelligence live? Some elements sit inside existing TechnologyOne modules, automating approvals, updates, and workflow actions, while others sit above them in a conversational layer that interprets, retrieves, and surfaces relevant data. That distinction matters. If it’s embedded, you’re buying automation. If it’s layered, you’re buying visibility. Both have value, but they’re not the same thing.

It’s also worth asking what “agentic” really means in this context. Can PLUS act across systems, or does it simply answer questions within TechnologyOne’s own data schema? And how open is the platform? Can it exchange data with Microsoft, ServiceNow, or anything beyond its own walls? And if so, how?

Then look inward. If your council data is inconsistent or your integrations incomplete, PLUS won’t solve that. That’s your job. But it will make those issues more visible. So be sure to build that in.

Finally, consider the commercial model. With AI there is usually price and cost. Pricing is typically the annual licensing fee (not all vendors charge one). Then there is cost3 based on “interactions” or “conversations” with the LLM. Because PLUS appears to be a private LLM environment rather than one that calls public models like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, there are unlikely to be separate token costs. That said, the detail I have access to is not clear on this point. Just read the footnote for more context to get started on your thinking.

At the end of the day, TechnologyOne’s AI investment is genuine and strategically significant. If I was a client I would want it because it absolutely has the potential to make daily life inside its ERP suite easier.

But PLUS is not yet the intelligent operating core implied by the word “agentic” in the media. At least not by whatelse I have seen and experienced in the market. For now, it’s best viewed as the next step in the evolution of the ERP interface. A great conversational layer that sits above structured data, powered by a large language model. That makes it interesting, but also something to approach like a proof of concept4 rather than a finished platform.

For councils, that’s still progress. It’s safe, auditable, and consistent with existing governance expectations. Just don’t mistake it for the architectural leap that companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, and ServiceNow are already building toward. A full AI platform where agents don’t just explain your data, they autonomously act on it.

AI really does matter. Don’t be afraid of it. But also, the real opportunity for local government isn’t to buy the loudest product. It is to build the conditions under which any of them can succeed. That means cleansing and classifying data, simplifying integrations, reducing system complexity, and establishing clear governance around data sharing and access. Once that groundwork is in place, choosing an AI layer, whether PLUS or anything else, becomes a question of fit, not faith.

As at launch, PLUS is a promising step in both usability and guided execution. It is a sign that the ERP interface is changing to how people will increasingly work. But it’s not yet a transformation in architecture. And that’s perfectly fine, provided everyone understands the difference. Because in local government, AI won’t replace data governance. It will simply expose the absence of it.

The same is true of today’s layoffs.

There are plenty of headlines decrying the storyline that AI is taking jobs. Thousands of people are losing work at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Dell, Salesforce, Spotify, Oracle. Lots of commentary around artificial intelligence as the inevitable cause. The framing is clean, modern, and irresistible. But it’s also misleading.

Layoffs are not new. Not in any industry but certainly not in tech. They are woven into the fabric of our industry, and indeed into corporate life more broadly. Consider a few significant milestones like when IBM cut 60,000 jobs in 1993 in what remains one of the largest corporate layoffs in history. I remember that time well because I was entering the workforce for the first time in Australia and there were no jobs. We were recovering from the 80’s hangover and “the recession we had to have”.

In 1996, AT&T eliminated 40,000 roles as part of a sweeping reorganisation. During the dot-com crash of 2000–2001, companies like Cisco slashed tens of thousands. And following the financial crisis of 2009 GM cut over 45,000 jobs in its bankruptcy restructuring.

It has been a decade since Microsoft let go 18,000 employees, largely tied to the failed Nokia acquisition. Even Deutsche Bank (18,000) and HSBC (10,000) around 2019 cut hard, as did Boeing (16,000) and other airlines in 2020 amid the pandemic.

Cut to today, and the scale of the current wave is significant. Amazon (27,000), Alphabet (12,000), Meta (21,000), Salesforce (7,000), Dell (25,000), Spotify (1,500). Significant yes. And counting. But the precedent is undeniable.

Each time, with each cycle, the language used to justify the cuts has reflected the zeitgeist. In the 1990s it was global competition. In the 2000s it was dot-com rationalisation. In the 2010s it was financial crisis and cloud transformation. Today, the buzz is AI.

The claim that AI is directly responsible for the current wave of job losses doesn’t hold up when set against the numbers. Adoption is certainly growing, but it is nowhere near the scale required to explain tens of thousands of redundancies in one stroke.

A 2024 McKinsey survey found around sixty-five percent of firms were experimenting with generative AI, yet most of that activity was confined to narrow, highly specific use cases.

A Gartner poll in 2024 reached a similar conclusion. Two-thirds of enterprises reported using AI across multiple business units, but in practice this often meant pilots, proofs of concept, or limited automation rather than wholesale transformation.

Even the U.S. Census Bureau’s own data (2025) reinforces the point, showing that adoption among large firms actually slipped from roughly fourteen percent to twelve percent over the course of mid-year surveys. Servicenow study data reflected the same.

Meanwhile, OECD studies suggest AI use is clustered in knowledge-intensive services, where scaling remains uneven and governance challenges continue to slow meaningful deployment. Put together, these findings show enthusiasm and experimentation, not mass substitution.

That is why this is not the footprint of a technology eliminating entire workforces at industrial scale. If anything, it reveals a hype-lag where the rhetoric of AI is running ahead of its operational impact.

The real drivers are the same ones we’ve seen before. Over-hiring during booms, rising interest rates, investor pressure to control costs, global instability, and shifting product portfolios. These are financial and structural decisions first, technological ones second.

So why do firms lean so heavily on AI in their explanations? Because it’s rhetorically powerful.

In the 2010s, saying “we’re restructuring to focus on the cloud” conveyed progress, even if it meant job cuts. Today, saying “we’re restructuring to focus on AI” sends the same signal. It ties a company’s strategy to the most hyped technology of the moment, reassuring investors that leadership has a future-focused plan.

It also conveniently shifts attention away from the uncomfortable truth that layoffs are part of our industry’s DNA. By framing them as the inevitable consequence of AI, executives are positioning themselves as visionaries riding the wave of change, rather than managers cutting costs, or worse, gamblers taking massive risks.

This is where the narrative needs to shift. Layoffs are not extraordinary events triggered by some unprecedented force. They are part of the ongoing cycle of disruption that defines modern business. So we should stop treating disruption as an anomaly and treating it more like business-as-usual.

For decades, companies have expanded during periods of optimism and cut back when the cycle turns. They have pivoted technologies, reorganised business units, and exited markets. Each time, the language has changed but the structural pattern is the same.

Which leads to the more important question. If disruption is constant, why do we still build technology and organisations as though stability is the norm? This is where the AI conversation actually matters. Not as a scapegoat for layoffs, but as a catalyst for rethinking how we design systems.

Organisations that assume disruption is normal will design differently. They will invest in platforms that are flexible, composable, and able to integrate new capabilities quickly. They will emphasise data governance and interoperability so that when the next pivot comes, they don’t collapse under the weight of technical debt. They will use AI not as a reason to cut, but as a way to augment, orchestrate, and absorb change.

This is the same argument I’ve made in other contexts. HYPA as the new architecture model because disruption is not an event, it is actually the operating environment. If we accept that, then the question can shift from “what caused this layoff wave?” to “how do we build our business with technologies that thrive in a world where waves never stop?”

Billy Joel’s refrain holds true in every respect: we didn’t start the fire, it’s always been burning. So let’s get real. AI did not suddenly ignite a wave of layoffs. It has simply become, at this point at least, the soundtrack for this cycle.

And the real challenge is not to find the villain of the moment, but to recognise the pattern that disruption is the new normal. The winners will be the organisations that stop pretending otherwise and build technology, governance, and culture for a world where the fire will never go out.

Because that’s where they are at. Buried under years of one-off decisions that looked rational at the time.

Every department, every function, every well-meaning executive made a choice. And those choices now compete, conflict, and rarely connect.

So I’d talk about the real thing that’s broken: the enterprise no longer works as a system. It is a broken down body. It works as a set of silos loosely joined by overworked integration teams and apologetic slide decks.

Everyone senses it. The CIO knows this. But software vendors rarely say it out loud. That’s inauthentic.

Instead, the conversation (pitch) is padded with empty buzzwords we’ve taught young sales people to say. Modularity, scalability, configurability. It’s all just shorthand for, “Don’t change a thing, just do the same stuff with our badge on it.”

Buyer autonomy isn’t the problem. “Better with us” isn’t even the problem. Alignment is. And that’s the lightbulb moment I’d push for.

CIO’s are held accountable for an environment they don’t fully own. They don’t pick all the tools. They don’t run all the projects. They don’t control all the budgets. But they’re expected to make it all work. So let’s talk about that.

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As I wrote about last week, I don’t think the CIO lost control. I think they were told to hand it over. And they did. System by system, project by project, often under pressure to "empower the business."

The business wants flow, but bought silos. The board wants transformation, but funded tools. The result is that most CIOs don’t choose software anymore. They manage tension. Between speed and control. Flexibility and coherence. Departmental ownership and enterprise design. IT as a function is still expected to make it all work.

The CIO is left staring at a games cupboard full of mismatched puzzle pieces. None from the same set, and none that fit. So I’d ask the only question that matters: how much fragmentation are you willing to live with?

Don’t ask the CIO to undo what the business sees as empowerment. Autonomy has its place. But it is not the same as alignment.

So if I were in that room today, I wouldn’t pretend we were discussing or even debating a tech choice. This is a structural conversation about reclaiming enterprise design. Not to recentralise power, but to reintroduce coherence.

5 Questions

If you are ready to face the real challenge and not just sell another tool, these are the questions worth asking:

1. Who is shaping the logic of how your enterprise actually runs?
   Start by questioning authorship and control. This opens the door to a conversation about design, not tools.

2. What if the real challenge isn’t what’s missing, but what’s misaligned?
   Now you pivot from ownership to coherence. This frames the problem as structural, not functional.

3. What if the problem isn’t that you need more ERP software, but that nothing you already have works together?
   Then you bring it to the ground level, connecting strategy with what’s actually happening in their stack.

4. What if it’s not about adding new ERP, but finding a better way to make what you already have work together?
   This is where you start to offer a pathway forward. Less about procurement, more about orchestration.

5. And is your architecture absorbing complexity, or just amplifying it?
   Finally, you bring it home with a diagnostic question. It challenges them to assess whether their current path is solving or worsening the problem.

Then I would shut up and listen. Because this isn’t about talking over the CIO. It’s about creating space. It is arriving at the place where the real conversation begins. Not about platforms, not about procurement. But about the possibility that someone finally sees it clearly. That the challenge isn’t replacing systems. It is rethinking the logic of how the business runs, and giving the CIO the room to lead that redesign.

CIOs do not lack vision. But somewhere along the way, we collectively walked away from some of the fundamentals of IT management. Specifically, the discipline of designing and governing the flow of information across the enterprise.

What we once called enterprise architecture has splintered into a thousand local optimisations. Technology is everywhere, but flow is nowhere. Integration is someone else’s job.

The pitch we need is not cloud-first. Not composable. Not future-ready. It is coherence. A shared architecture that restores flow and reconnects intent with execution.

As the conversation deepens, often over several meetings, the weight of legacy starts to press in. Inevitably, someone asks the question: Isn’t this just a battle between ERP and PaaS?

It’s not. That’s a false fight. It’s a comfort zone. As Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal famously stated, “When we don’t know what to do, we do more of what we know”.

The shift most software vendors don’t want to talk about is that ERP can no longer carry the enterprise on its own. It was built for structure, not experience. PaaS was built for movement, not control. One governs the data. The other governs the flow.

It’s symbiotic. ERP vendors need PaaS vendors. Together, they create coherence without regression. And it’s happening whether they admit it or not.

Companies like SAP and Oracle and Workday and Infor and many many more know they can’t win the enterprise alone anymore. That’s smart on their part. They’ve seen what happens when CIOs are forced to stitch everything together without a shared foundation. The result is not transformation. It’s not even entropy. It’s worse. It’s a cancer that ultimately ends in excision.

The sales pitch punchline is that PaaS is the quiet architectural force reshaping the enterprise. It doesn’t compete with ERP. It complements it. It doesn’t rip and replace. It wraps, connects, and orchestrates. It builds enterprise muscle without forcing a rebuild. While others chase composable dreams, PaaS platforms like Servicenow and Salesforce are becoming the connective tissue. Not just between systems, but across workflows, identity, data, and decisions.

But even that’s only part of the story. And one that software salespeople often get wrong. You can’t build a future by disowning the past. You need a vision for what’s next, yes, but you also need a legacy to stand on.

That’s why the “better with us” pitch falls flat. It’s not bold. It’s not new. It’s a tired trope. And it needs to be retired permanently from the toolkit.

The systems that got you here, the ERPs, the custom databases, the long-standing processes, all carry the institutional memory of the enterprise. You don’t just walk away from them. You surround them with better logic. You elevate them. You make them interoperable. You make them matter again.

The smartest CIOs aren’t burning it all down. They’re building forward, with context. Because the future isn’t greenfield. It’s layered. And the platforms that win will be the ones that understand both sides of the equation: what must evolve and what must endure. If you're not having that conversation, you don’t actually understand the real-world constraints and dualities CIOs face and you're not in their line of sight.

If I were selling today, that’s what I’d offer. Not a product. Not a module. I’d sell a way to bring order back to the enterprise. I don’t think that’s old fashioned. I think it’s a way to restore design without sacrificing autonomy.

Because if the CIO has to keep managing chaos, they should at least have a platform that sees the seams of the business, not as flaws to be patched, but as the very places where real value lives.

That kind of thinking isn’t rooted in ERP anymore. It’s being shaped and accelerated by PaaS. Because coherence begins with honesty.

So what’s your opening line? Here’s mine:

“Before we talk about software, can we talk about the mess? Because that’s where every CIO I meet is starting from.”

But that comfort hides something deeper and more dangerous. It is a confusion between loyalty and leadership. Between having software, and having a strategy. It papers over the fact that most core processes haven't evolved, and neither has the citizen experience. Staff are still buried in manual approvals. Spreadsheets still drive planning. Residents still wonder why basic services are so hard to access online. Or why, when they are, they still feel like a maze.

And so, without realising it, councils have allowed their vendor relationships to stand in for critical thinking about how their organisations actually work. Or should, at least. Large swathes of the sector have come to mistake the presence of technology for the practice of transformation. As if saying what system you use is the same as designing the future.

It’s not. And never was.

What began as a practical investment in systems of record for payroll, property, and payments has slowly hardened into default thinking. ERP didn’t just anchor operations. It began to shape the entire conversation. System upgrades became stand-ins for reform. New modules were sold as innovation. Councils have allowed operational compliance systems to define their entire digital ambition.

And that’s the real problem.

ERP systems weren’t built to modernise government. They were built to stabilise it. To close the books. Pay the staff. Track the assets. Let’s not quibble. These are essential functions. But they are not transformative ones. They don’t improve the resident experience. They don’t reshape how services are delivered. They don’t empower employees to work differently. And yet, ERP remains the lens through which most councils still view transformation.

Not because it’s strategic. But because it’s familiar.

No resident ever said, “This council feels modern because their finance module reconciles faster.” No employee ever loved their job more because the leave balance screen moved to the cloud.

But that’s still where most digital investment goes. Toward internal systems, compliance upgrades, and marginal improvements to processes that were never the problem to begin with.

It’s as if cloud-hosted compliance has become the peak of ambition. Meanwhile, CIOs and IT Managers are swamped with stakeholder project lists that grow longer by the month. Yet most can’t be delivered meaningfully because the architecture can’t support the change those projects demand.

Outside the government bubble, digital has moved on. Airlines don’t win loyalty with flashy websites. Banks aren’t modern because they have CRMs. Retailers aren’t efficient because they upgraded their ledger. These sectors have rebuilt around orchestration, observability, real-time insight, and embedded intelligence. Their systems anticipate, adapt, resolve issues before the customer even notices.

They are invisible because they work.

And that’s the real shift. The best digital services don’t call attention to themselves. They remove friction. They just deliver. That’s the standard now. But local government isn’t building for that standard. It’s still buying upgrades and calling it strategy.

The private sector didn’t get there by luck. It got there because it had to. Airlines (and the underlying agent ecosystems that once supported them) that didn’t modernise lost bookings. Banks that didn’t simplify access lost customers. Retailers that clung to clunky inventory systems didn’t survive. Digital transformation became an existential requirement. Not modernise or die. Modernise or become irrelevant.

Local governments have never faced that kind of pressure. They’re protected by legislation. Residents don’t get to choose their council. A permit is a permit. A rate notice is a rate notice. And as long as those obligations are technically met, councils survive.

But survival is not the same as evolution. And the absence of competitive pressure has led to the dangerous assumption that digital transformation is optional. It’s not. It hasn’t been for years. And now they're being judged by a standard they didn’t choose but can’t ignore.

Because residents aren’t comparing your council to the one next door. They’re comparing you to their bank. To Apple. To the airline app that shows their baggage moving in real time. To the parcel tracker that tells them where a box is in Shanghai and when it will land in Shepparton.

And here’s the thing. Those expectations aren’t unrealistic. They’re entirely reasonable because the technology that makes them possible is already in play. It’s not science fiction. It’s not enterprise-only. It’s the architecture of the modern digital experience. Available. Accessible. Proven.

Which makes the gap even harder to defend. Because it’s not a capability problem.
It’s a decision problem.

Citizens now expect self-service that works the first time. They expect updates without having to ask. They expect systems that feel invisible because they don’t fail. For decades, they never cared what software their council used. But technology decisions are no longer internal matters. They now define the public experience. The system is the service. And when that system underdelivers, it’s not the vendor who loses trust, it’s the council.

Which is why brand-centric thinking is no longer harmless. It’s a liability. It traps councils in the wrong conversation. What vendor do we use? What module can we bolt on? What roadmap feature should we hold out for?

None of those questions drive real change. The right conversation starts somewhere else entirely. What part of the business needs to change? And how would we know if it had?

That’s where outcome metrics become critical. Not vendor dashboards. Not system usage stats. But lived internal indicators. How many hours to onboard a new staff member? How long to resolve a planning application? How often does a resident call twice for the same issue? Those are the metrics that matter. Because those are the moments that shape trust.

And they’re also the metrics that ERP systems were never designed to move.

Take service resolution. If your complaints process still bounces between departments, if systems don’t share histories, if customers aren’t updated, no module will fix that. That’s not a system feature problem. That’s a workflow problem. A data problem. An architectural problem. And architecture isn’t a feature. It’s a design decision.

Or take automation. If your finance team is still manually routing invoices, downloading spreadsheets, and reconciling across platforms with incompatible data models you haven’t digitised. You’ve just made the manual labour digital.

True automation means business logic abstracted from code. It means changes that don’t need vendor intervention. It means systems that evolve with you not six months after you raise a ticket.

And that’s not an ERP conversation. It’s a platform one.

This is why PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) matters. Because it puts councils back in control. Of workflows. Of data. Of service design. It breaks the dependency on monolithic systems and vendor-defined roadmaps. It enables shared data models, reusable components, flexible integrations. It lets councils design for the real world, not just configure within constraints.

But even the best-designed system won’t deliver if you can’t see how it’s performing.

That’s where observability comes in. The ability to track performance in real time, detect failure before users do, and continuously improve. In high-functioning digital environments, observability isn’t optional. It’s expected. Industries rely on tools like Datadog, Splunk, Dynatrace, and New Relic not for trendiness, but because they make complexity manageable and failure visible.

Local government still lags behind. Not just in tooling. In mindset.

System issues are still found through complaints, not alerts. Downtime is still tolerated as long as the core system kept running. Payroll ran? Then the system “worked.”
But no one asks whether the resident experience held together. Or whether staff had to patch things up manually behind the scenes.

In one council I worked with, it took observability to finally prove what everyone suspected. A critical parking integration had been quietly failing for months. Until then, the vendor actively and aggressively denied it. The council doubted it. But the citizens knew. Once the data was irrefutable, the conversation shifted. It was no longer a technology debate. It was a business resolution. The fix came fast. The ROI came faster.

This is the missing piece in most local government tech strategies. It’s not just about building better systems. It’s about knowing whether those systems are doing what you say they do.

And let’s stop pretending this kind of transformation is a “big council” luxury. It’s not.

Small IT teams don’t need less automation. They need more. They don’t have time for manual triage, workaround scripts, or chasing vendors for fixes. They need environments that support them and architectures that reduce complexity, not systems that multiply it.

The irony? The same tools billion-dollar banks use to lower overhead are exactly what small councils need to survive with three techies and a constrained budget. Not because they’re aiming for scale. But because they have no margin for waste.

To get there, councils have to let go of the dangerous illusion that software is strategy. That a system upgrade is transformation. That progress is measured in project completions, not service outcomes.

It’s not about running more projects. It’s about making different decisions. And that starts with architecture. Not as a buzzword. As a discipline. Because without it, every dollar spent is just a newer version of the same limitation.

So what can you actually do about it?

Once you’ve seen the pattern, things like projects piling up, systems stuck, and residents frustrated, it’s tempting to reach for another upgrade. Or revisit the vendor roadmap. But those are the same moves that got us here. What’s needed isn’t another product. It’s a new way of thinking about the problem.

You need a way to cut through the noise. To see where the real pain is. What processes are broken. What systems are slowing you down. Where effort is wasted. Where the friction lives. You need a clear, practical lens that connects business outcomes to architectural decisions.

That’s where a Business Impact Matrix comes in.

It’s not a wishlist. It’s not a vendor evaluation. It’s a simple, structured way to surface what matters. Function by function, and outcome by outcome. It lays out the changes you want to see, the processes involved, the systems in play, and the level of manual effort or fragmentation you’re dealing with. It shows you where data is stuck, where integration fails, and where automation could actually make a difference.

It doesn’t give you a product shortlist. It gives you something far more useful: a map of pain. And with it, a map of opportunity.

Because once you can see the real constraints, like onboarding that takes two weeks or more, service requests that bounce between departments, or budget planning stuck in disconnected spreadsheets, something shifts.

You stop asking “Which product has that feature?” And start asking the only question that matters. What capability do we need to build or buy to remove this barrier?

That’s strategy. Not brand preference. But here’s the problem...

Even when councils get to that point, when they see clearly that the issue isn’t the ERP module, but the architecture, many still don’t know what to do next. They recognise the gap. They understand that PaaS is the right direction. But they don’t know how to buy it.

Procurement language is still wired for the last generation. It’s built around systems, not services. Around modules, not capability. Around features, not flexibility. And because of that, the insight gets shelved. The recommendation gets buried. And the cycle resets.

Another upgrade. Another RFP. Another attempt to stretch an ERP suite into places it was never meant to go. Not because councils are resistant to change. But because the change they need doesn’t fit neatly into the frameworks they’ve always used.

This is the moment the conversation must shift. From choosing tools to designing environments. From asking what systems do, to asking what the organisation needs to become. From chasing logos, to building platforms that serve people.

Until that shift happens, transformation will keep falling short. Because you can’t buy your way out of an architectural problem with a transactional mindset.

The road ahead isn’t easy. It asks councils to do more than upgrade. It asks them to unlearn. To let go of decades of procurement-driven thinking. To stop rebranding the old as new. To build digital accountability. Because unlike broken footpaths, broken workflows don’t trigger inspections. But they should.

Digital services are now public infrastructure. Just as essential as roads, water, and waste. The difference is, their failures don’t leave cracks in the pavement. They leave gaps in trust. And by the time those gaps become visible, the damage is already done.

The future of local government won’t be defined by who upgrades their ERP first.
It will be defined by who stops waiting for a vendor roadmap and starts designing an environment their people actually need. Staff. Citizens. Communities. Everyone who depends on things just working.

So the next time someone in the room says, “We’ve always been a [vendor] council,” don’t nod. Ask them what they actually want to change. Because if that answer isn’t clear, the strategy isn’t either.

For decades, enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) have occupied the center of the local government technology universe. Dominant vendors have successfully positioned themselves as the core infrastructure of councils. And to a degree, they are.

Rates, revenue, finance, payroll, and property systems matter. They’re foundational. But a quiet myth has taken root. That these systems represent the totality of the digital city. That if they’re functioning, the city is functioning.

In truth, these systems often consume up to 80% of the technology budget, while covering as little as 20% of what a city or town actually does.

The lived experience of the city, from the eyes of a resident, a business owner, or a visitor, interacts with dozens of other systems every day. They log service requests through Snap Send Solve. They check traffic updates, follow local alerts, engage with tourism websites, consult planning portals, participate in community consultation on platforms like Bang the Table. They pay for parking, access events, view council meetings, sign up for childcare, receive flood notifications, or register for emergency housing assistance. That is, they interact with the city, as a service. These are not edge cases or side features. They are the city, in digital form. But they’re almost never part of the ERP.

The deeper problem is that each of these systems is typically managed in a different department, procured under a different contract, governed under a different logic. Some are owned, some leased, some integrated by necessity. The result is fragmentation disguised as progress.

When executives ask for a view of operations across their council, there often isn’t one. What they get instead are disconnected spreadsheets, dashboards that don’t talk to each other, and a dependency on institutional memory to connect the dots.

This is the heart of the City-as-a-Service (CaaS) challenge.

The promise of CaaS is not about any one system. It’s about thinking of the city as an interconnected ecosystem. An organic whole where services, stakeholders, platforms, people, devices, and infrastructure all operate in relationship to one another.

In this framing, the real gold standard isn’t whether a system performs, but whether it interacts. It’s not just about uptime or compliance or SLAs; it’s about context. How does this service influence the others? What new value is created when data flows between systems? What do we see when we look at the city in motion, not in silos?

This view challenges everything about how councils have traditionally approached technology. It suggests that digital platforms are no longer just operational tools. They are civic infrastructure.

They should be planned for, maintained, governed, and funded as such. Just as we invest in roads, water systems, and waste management, we must now invest in service orchestration, integration layers, and real-time visibility across digital assets. These are the pipes and pathways of the modern city.

And critically, the audience for this isn’t the Head of IT or the Finance Manager. The CFO doesn't care about tourism data. The IT Manager can’t consolidate stakeholder sentiment. The Facilities team isn’t thinking about digital mobility.

The real customer for this shift is the mayor’s office, the CEO, the executive team. Because this isn’t about systems. It’s about oversight. It’s about accountability, transparency, responsiveness, and the ability to lead from insight, not guesswork.

Selling individual systems to functional heads may have worked when each service stood alone. But in today’s world, where mobility, safety, community sentiment, customer service, emergency management, and economic development all intertwine, we need leaders who see the whole and who demand a platform that mirrors the complexity and connectivity of the city itself.

This is where the “Smart City” vision faltered.

The Smart City movement began with genuine intent. To use technology to improve urban life. And I still subscribe to that vision. But somewhere along the way, the narrative lost its coherence and sliced into point solutions. Smart parking. Smart lighting. Smart bins. Each with their own app, their own dashboard, and their own disconnected data sets.

Instead of unifying the city, Smart City thinking allowed fragmentation to accelerate under the illusion of innovation. The result was a patchwork. More tech, but not more clarity.

The idea was always about creating more connected, responsive, and inclusive cities. That part remains true and necessary. But the way it’s been executed, through a focus on smart things instead of smart systems, has weakened the impact.

It’s time to reclaim the intent and rebuild the architecture around integration, not innovation theatre.

That’s why we need a new frame: Platform City.

Platform City doesn’t mean every service is centralised, but it does mean everything is connectable. It treats the city as a dynamic digital organism, where each function, from mobility, engagement, safety, and customer service, to resilience, is a system within a system. Governed independently, yes, but designed to interoperate.

The move from Smart to Platform is more than semantic. It’s a shift in control from vendor-led product conversations to city-led platform governance. It prioritises the executive’s need for a clear, real-time view of operations, not just departmental efficiency. It demands that vendors stop selling what they have and start aligning to what the city needs.

Platform City is not a technology play. It’s a leadership model. And the cities that adopt it will finally move from digital potential to real civic intelligence.

I've had some great conversations lately with Oleg, Oleks, Anatolii, and Denys at MISTO. While my own work at City of Hobart was far removed from such extreme pressures, it is pretty clear that the core challenges of urban digitalisation remain strikingly similar.

Cities worldwide are caught between the promise of digital transformation and the stubborn realities of municipal governance. While technology has never been more advanced, many city systems remain fragmented, slow to adapt, and disconnected from the people they serve.

Even well-resourced global megacities struggle to modernise effectively, while mid-sized and smaller cities often lack the capacity to take full advantage of digital opportunities. The challenge isn’t just about adopting new technology, that’s part of the problem. The challenge is in rethinking how cities operate in an increasingly digital world.

Kyiv Digital is the official app of the Kyiv city government. It has over three million users and stands as one of the strongest proofs of concept for how a smart city platform can function at scale.

MISTO shares some of the same team DNA. It is a distinct and independent City-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform, first launched in Odesa, and now being expanded across other Ukrainian cities.

Emerging from the crucible of crisis in Ukraine, it represents a new phase of city platform innovation. One shaped by resilience, adaptability, and the practical realities of distributed municipal transformation.

The technical challenges MISTO addresses are not unique to Ukrainian cities. They reflect the same six architectural imperatives I explored in Building Tomorrow: surging demand, information dissemination, disrupted supply chains, increased remote operations, uncontrolled escalation, and heightened exploitation.

So in that respect, MISTO, and those experiences drawn from the Kyiv Digital program, is a model for what a modern city platform should be capable of delivering anywhere in the world.

Reflecting on my time at the City of Hobart between 2018 and 2021, I see clear parallels in the underlying constraints for transformation. Hobart was not in a warzone, but the technical challenges were equally present. Siloed data, fragmented services, and a lack of a unified digital experience for citizens created friction between city departments and the people they served.

Yet, a critical difference also lies in the role of leadership. In Kyiv, the mayor is the biggest champion and primary client of the city's digital transformation, driving its adoption from the top down. In Hobart, as in many other cities, the mayor holds a more representative position, with authority distributed across the council. This structural difference changes the speed and direction of transformation. Where Kyiv could push through a unified vision, cities like Hobart must navigate consensus-driven governance, which often leads to slower, more fragmented change.

This raises an important question: Is governance structure the key driver of change, or is it culture? I think governance structures shape the process of transformation, but culture determines its pace and depth. A centralised leader can push change quickly, but only if the institutional culture supports it. Likewise, in a distributed governance model, progress may be slow unless there is an ingrained culture of adaptability and digital ambition.

In Kyiv, the urgency created first by the pandemic and then by war fostered a culture where rapid, decisive action was necessary and expected. The mayor’s strong leadership aligned with this need, enabling bold, top-down decision-making that could be implemented at scale. In contrast, cities like Hobart operate within a culture of deliberation and shared governance. Even when there is recognition of the need for change, implementation happens in a piecemeal fashion, shaped by the slow-moving realities of municipal decision-making. At the same time, technology itself plays a role in shaping what is possible.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology has emerged as the right architecture at the right time, allowing cities to move away from rigid, monolithic systems and toward scalable, adaptable solutions. Unlike traditional software deployments, which require heavy customization and infrastructure investment, PaaS enables municipalities to rapidly implement new capabilities while maintaining flexibility for future needs. This approach aligns well with both centralized and distributed governance models, offering cities the ability to adopt and evolve digital services at their own pace.

When paired with the right leadership and culture, PaaS can become a catalyst for lasting transformation rather than just another layer of municipal complexity.

A City-as-a-Service platform must be scalable and adaptable, capable of serving both large metropolitan areas and smaller urban environments. Service design plays a crucial role in ensuring flexibility, and any city platform must be structured in a way that allows seamless integration with local governance models and regulations.

In real life, cities also do not operate as monolithic entities; they are networks of neighborhoods, districts, and services that must function together. Even in little old Hobart we had 13 distinct neighbourhoods with competing challenges, stakeholders and sponsor groups. Yet, one of the biggest challenges is not a lack of technology solutions. It is that there are too many of them. Cities are overloaded with fragmented applications for transport, parking, housing, economic development, tourism, and security, all managed by different departments or vendors who often operate in silos.

This complexity is exactly why a PaaS-based approach is so critical. Rather than requiring citizens to navigate the bureaucratic mess of which agency manages what, a PaaS model abstracts the integration layer, enabling seamless access to multiple services through a single pane of glass.

Whether a resident is checking public transport schedules, applying for a business permit, paying utility bills, or seeking shelter, they shouldn’t have to think about which department is responsible. They should just be able to get what they need in one place.

The potential extends beyond public services. Private sector collaborations can further enhance the experience, particularly in expanding into "cities within cities." Large housing developments, corporate campuses, and even private urban districts can operate as extensions of a municipal service network, offering services that integrate smoothly with the city's broader infrastructure. This approach creates a true ecosystem of services that work together rather than competing for attention.

Another critical consideration is how citizens interact with these platforms. Too often, government services require residents to navigate layers of bureaucracy just to access simple functions. The power of a PaaS-based city platform is in its ability to simplify this complexity by creating a unified interface across multiple agencies and services.

A resident shouldn’t need to decipher the difference between municipal and regional transit authorities, nor should they care whether business permitting and economic development fall under different agencies. With the rise of Digital Public Infrastructure in every modern country, identity verification and payment systems are already in place. Yet cities continue to operate as disconnected bureaucracies. A well-designed PaaS-based solution removes these barriers, abstracting the complexity of governance so that citizens can access the services they need without ever thinking about the silos behind them.

The idea of an Agentic AI concierge model, where AI-driven services anticipate citizen needs rather than requiring manual searches, could completely transform how people engage with their local governments. This is not something MISTO has fully implemented yet, but given their connections with Microsoft and ServiceNow it is a direction worth pursuing. If the future of digital services is in automation and proactive assistance, then cities must rethink their approach to citizen engagement, ensuring that services are personalised, accessible, and frictionless.

Of course, one of the greatest obstacles to any city platform is the issue of data silos. Cities rely on GIS and increasingly, IoT networks, digital twins and other operational technologies to map and manage their infrastructure, but these systems often exist in isolation.

Departmental territorialism leads to fragmented information, creating inefficiencies and friction. In Hobart, I saw firsthand how different city- and state departments maintained control over their datasets, resisting integration efforts. A truly effective City-as-a-Service platform must break down these barriers, ensuring that municipal data flows seamlessly across agencies. Without this, even the most advanced digital infrastructure will struggle to deliver real impact.

Beyond efficiency, the question of resilience is unavoidable.

Kyiv Digital has been tested under conditions that no city should ever have to endure. Like most of us, the pandemic pushed its digital service delivery to the limits, but then the war in Ukraine forced an urgent redesign of how a city operates under extreme duress.

It has shown that a modern city platform must be built for resilience from the outset, capable of functioning in scenarios where traditional infrastructure is compromised. This means integrating geo-located emergency notifications, blackout-resistant messaging, and predictive analytics that can simulate crisis scenarios, whether this is wildfires in California or severe storms in Australia. These capabilities are not luxuries; they are essential for cities facing an increasingly uncertain future.

MISTO therefore, is well-positioned for broader adoption, but it is also part of a much larger global shift. Around the world, government technology spending is accelerating, and cities are looking for scalable solutions that can modernise service delivery without the burden of building bespoke digital ecosystems from scratch.

The United States alone has tens of thousands of small and mid-sized municipalities, many of which lack the expertise or funding to develop their own platforms. The European Union presents another layer of complexity, with 25 official languages and fragmented governance structures. Australia and Asia offer different challenges and opportunities again. The need for a scalable, flexible City-as-a-Service model is not just theoretical. It is becoming an essential part of the next wave of urban digital transformation.

The Ukrainian examples are proof that digital transformation happens when vision, urgency, and the right technology align. They certainly serves as a vision for what modern digitally supported cities can be, but more importantly, as evidence that change is possible when leadership, culture, and technology move in unison.

They are also a blueprint for a future where municipal services, whatever they are, are not just digital but adaptive, resilient, and truly citizen-centric. During my time in Hobart, we often talked about digital transformation, but too often, it remained just that. The ambition was there, and we even won awards for our strategies. But ambition alone doesn’t create change. Ideas stalled in the face of fragmented governance, competing priorities, and the inertia of legacy systems.

I guess the big question is, what does a resilient city really mean? For most municipalities that comes down to a political vote. But in Ukraine, resilience isn’t a strategic buzzword. It is something far greater.

When cities must function under siege, their digital infrastructure isn’t just about efficiency or modernisation. It becomes the backbone of civic endurance. By contrast, the everyday governance challenges in peaceful cities, things like bureaucratic gridlock, political debates, and slow-moving transformation, suddenly seem so small.

Today, Tasmania’s emblem serves as more than just a cautionary tale of ecological collapse. It’s a metaphor for the looming fate of government strongholds that once seemed untouchable but are not immune to change and are now on the brink of obsolescence. Adapt or die.

The latest example comes from the Premier’s recent announcement that Tasmania is considering the privatisation of its Land Titles Office (LTO). For many, this may seem like just another bureaucratic shuffle, a practical financial decision rather than a seismic shift. But that view underestimates the significance of what’s really happening.

For more than a century, the public sector has operated under the assumption that some functions are simply too integral to governance, too embedded in legislation, and too structurally unique to be disrupted. That they will always remain within government hands. But this assumption is increasingly flawed.

The reality is that those assumptions are crumbling, not just in Tasmania but globally. The collision of customer experience (CX) innovation with regulatory experience (RX) transformation is breaking down barriers that once separated public services from every other sector.

At its core, digital transformation has always been about two things: customer expectations and platform economics. First, customers expect fast, seamless, and intuitive experiences. Second, platforms, rather than traditional institutions, are proving to be the most scalable and efficient way to deliver those experiences.

This transformation has already reshaped industries like banking and retail, where digital services have shifted from a competitive advantage to an outright necessity. Now, the same forces are at work in public service regulation and governance. The question is no longer whether government functions can be privatised or automated. It’s which ones will go next.

If land administration, once the unchallenged custodian of property ownership records, can be handed to the private sector, what follows? What happens when technology doesn’t just assist government but begins to replace it entirely?

The very foundations of regulatory control are shifting, and with them, the notion that certain functions must always remain within government hands.

More critically, what happens when the same digital transformation principles that revolutionised customer experience (CX) in the private sector collide with regulatory experience (RX) in government? The answer is that this time, everything changes.

Governments have long sold off government business enterprises (GBEs) and deregulated industries. These were moves that were once political decisions, reversible with the right shift in policy or leadership. But today’s transformation isn’t just about privatisation; it’s about something far more fundamental.

Once a function is digitised, automated, and absorbed into platform-based service delivery, there’s no going back. The shift isn’t just political, it’s structural. In a world where technology can replace, rather than just augment, government functions, these changes are permanent.

As technology continues to penetrate the core operations of government, even the most bureaucratically fortified institutions are no longer immune to change. They aren’t just being streamlined. They are undergoing a fundamental metamorphosis.

The Digital Public Infrastructure Revolution

For decades, governments defended their monopoly over regulatory functions by arguing that complexity made privatisation unworkable. They insisted that interpreting laws and policies required human discretion, that public institutions were the only true guardians of public interest, and that no private entity could replicate the intricacies of government oversight. But the past decade has proven otherwise.

This shift isn’t just ideological, nor is it purely driven by budget pressures. What’s making it inevitable is the rapid development of digital public infrastructure (DPI); the very foundation that governments themselves have been building.

DPI consists of the core systems that enable services to be delivered at scale, seamlessly, and in real-time. It includes open banking frameworks, digital identity verification, real-time payment networks, automated compliance systems, and AI-driven regulatory enforcement. These aren’t just efficiency tools; they are structural transformations that replace traditional bureaucratic processes with digital services.

Governments around the world have been laying the groundwork for a future where regulation is no longer a slow-moving, paper-driven function but a real-time, automated process embedded into digital platforms. This is already happening in financial regulation. Once dominated by government auditors and compliance officers, financial oversight is now largely executed through automated systems that detect fraud, verify identities, and enforce regulatory policies. Many of them operated by private sector platforms rather than government agencies. The state still sets the rules, but it is no longer the sole enforcer.

In effect, governments have spent years building the systems that now make their own regulatory dominance unnecessary. This isn’t their demise. It is a profound shift. The question is no longer whether governments can privatise regulatory functions, but whether they are still needed to perform them at all.

The same pattern is emerging in planning and development approvals, where AI-driven compliance tools can assess applications against zoning laws in seconds, ensuring regulatory adherence without human intervention.

If these systems already exist and function at scale, why should a city planner spend weeks reviewing something that a platform can verify instantly?

And then there is Agentic AI, a technological leap that makes the distinction between private and public sector service delivery even more redundant. Unlike traditional automation, which simply speeds up bureaucratic processes, Agentic AI doesn’t just assist, it replaces.

These autonomous digital agents can learn from precedent, interact with applicants, process applications, and escalate exceptions with full legislative reasoning. In a regulatory environment, this means that planners, compliance officers, and certifiers would no longer be required for the bulk of routine assessments.

Governments may still set the laws, but the role of the regulator shifts from administration to oversight. The days of paper-driven bureaucracy are numbered, replaced by an era where legislation itself becomes machine-readable, enforceable in real-time by digital agents that never fatigue, never delay, and never operate beyond their mandate. Hallelujah!

The Collapse of the Three-Tier Government Model?

The impact of these shifts is not limited to service delivery. It is eroding the very structure of government itself. The federal, state, and local three-tier model was designed for a world where governance was geographically bound and administratively separate. But in an era of digital-first governance, those rigid divisions make less and less sense.

Federal and state governments are already duplicating each other’s efforts. Large-scale digital public infrastructure, such as real-time national identity verification, centralised data registries, and AI-driven policy enforcement, is collapsing the distinctions between what a federal department controls versus a state agency.

Local governments have long been the custodians of place-based regulation, but that role is shrinking as cloud-based platforms take over urban planning, business licensing, and compliance enforcement. The truth is, many of Australia’s 500+ councils no longer need dedicated IT departments, finance teams, or even in-house planning officers. These functions are increasingly outsourced, regionalised, or shared across multiple entities1.

In theory, they could go even further. Core regulatory functions could be fully subscribed to as a service from state or federal providers, or even private platforms.

The obstacle isn’t technical feasibility. It is bureaucratic inertia. Governments still think like governments, designing systems the way they always have, failing to recognise that the strategic shift is already happening. In fairness, that’s not the planning officers job. Their focus is on delivering services, not reimagining the structures that underpin them.

Take PlanBuild Tasmania, a flagship project under the state’s Digital Strategy. Instead of rethinking how planning approvals could function in a platform-driven world, it was built as a traditional government system. It is a portal that behaves more like an alternative (to private market) ERP than a true transformational RX digital service. The process remains unchanged:

• A local government receives an application (now through a portal like PlanBuild).

• Council officers manually review the submission against planning codes.

• An internal, often slow, assessment process takes place before a decision is issued.

But what if planning approvals didn’t have to work this way at all? A true PaaS-based system would replace this rigid, council-owned process with a real-time, AI-driven compliance engine.

Development applications could be assessed instantly, flagged for review only in exceptional cases, and processed within a shared, open model that includes private-sector planning certifiers. Instead of waiting weeks for a decision, compliant applications could be approved in seconds, and critically, the function would no longer need to be owned or managed by local government (or their state custodians) at all.

Governments are still building systems for the world they are used to, not the one that is emerging. That has to change. And the most disruptive force underpinning all of this is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

Platform as a Service

Governments no longer need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on massive, custom-built IT projects that take years to develop. Instead, regulatory functions can now be stood up in months, at a fraction of the cost, with full scalability and adaptability to changing laws. This means that government doesn’t just outsource services. It actually stops being the primary provider of many services altogether.

If regulatory compliance can be built into nationwide AI-driven platforms, what happens to state-based variations? If development applications can be assessed through a single intelligent regulatory engine, why should local councils have separate planning departments?

The three-tier structure of government was built on administrative necessity. But in a world where regulation is automated and delivered via platforms, that necessity no longer exists. The platforms collapse them. As citizens we don’t care. Government functions need no longer be defined by rigid jurisdictional layers but by modular, scalable digital platforms that can be accessed by any level of government, or even outsourced entirely.

For those who resist this shift, arguing that regulation should remain firmly within government hands, the market will make that decision irrelevant. The moment a private sector platform offers a faster, cheaper, and more reliable alternative to a government-run regulatory function, the public will demand it.

The question won’t be whether the government should privatise services, it will be whether it has any reason to compete at all.

Fading From Sight

The collision of CX innovation, Agentic AI, and PaaS is dismantling the very foundations of how governments regulate, approve, and enforce. Tasmania’s Dead Dog is a fitting symbol of the traditional government structures that no longer need to exist. But let’s be under no illusion that their Premier’s announcement about the possible privatisation of the state LTO is an isolated move. It is a signal of what is to come.

It is not just a shift in efficiency. It is a fundamental rethinking of what government is and what it is for.

The traditional three-tier structures of both government and technology, once rigid and distinct, are rapidly dissolving. Just as monolithic IT architectures have given way to cloud-based platforms that distribute services dynamically, the clear divisions between federal, state, and local government are fading.

Public and private service delivery are no longer separate domains; they are converging into shared, digital-first ecosystems. The old strongholds of government aren’t just being reformed. They are being redefined, and in some cases, erased entirely.

Governments that recognise this shift have the opportunity to lead the transformation, ensuring that public value, not just private profit, remains at the core of the change. But for those that don’t, including city governments and Tasmania’s state government if it treats the Land Titles Office as just another GBE sell-off, the outcome is already set. Like extinct emblems, they risk being pushed into irrelevance. Not by natural evolution, but by the momentum of change, whether it is seen as progress or not.

While industries like banking, retail, and airlines have been forced to modernise, local governments have largely been able to get away with stagnation. The real question is: why? The real answer is: because they can.

Unlike private sector organisations, which must continuously improve to remain competitive, local governments face no such imperative. Their main obligation is to meet legal requirements, not to optimise service delivery. That’s a low bar, and it explains why so many councils lag behind in digital maturity.

In theory, competitive pressure should come from the public. The Tiebout Model suggests that if residents are dissatisfied with their local government, they should “vote with their feet” and move to a better-performing council area. But in reality, switching local governments isn’t like switching banks or internet providers. It’s an expensive, disruptive life event.

Because the cost of moving LGAs is so high, local governments operate as geographic monopolies. Unlike a failing airline or a bank with a broken app, a council with terrible digital services doesn’t face an immediate financial or political consequence. And in a system where there are no consequences for doing nothing, doing nothing becomes the default.

Sure, some councils are trapped in a cycle of short-term fixes, budget constraints, and vendor lock-in. Their IT teams know what needs to be done but lack the authority, funding, or time to drive real reform. But others are actively resisting change, whether through bureaucratic inertia, risk aversion, or outright leadership incompetence.

Could you imagine any other customer-facing business today where a CEO could simply ignore a transformation agenda without consequence? In competitive industries, failing to modernise means falling behind, or being replaced. Yet in local government, leaders can actively resist digital transformation and face little to no pressure to change (see The Power of Perspective).

When questioned, they often claim that other priorities take precedence, but this has become a facile argument and a convenient excuse that allows inefficiencies to persist unchallenged. Other companies don’t get to defer core service improvements indefinitely, because competitors force them to evolve. In local government, no real market force demands better service, no competitors threaten their position, and without accountability mechanisms in place, stagnation is simply allowed to continue. And so, the infinity loop persists.

Some councils want to modernise but lack the resources. Others have the resources and still won’t change. Some leaders don’t understand technology well enough to make informed decisions. Others actively choose short-term patches over long-term reform because it’s easier.

The Paradox of Digital Maturity

Some argue that exposing digital inefficiencies through benchmarking will create pressure for change. Transparency does help. When the Victorian state government published planning application times, it forced slow councils to respond. But exposure alone isn’t enough.

If councils respond to scrutiny by making only surface-level changes, the real inefficiencies remain. Instead of fixing broken workflows, they add layers of bureaucratic workarounds. Instead of adopting modern, real-time service models, they invest in reporting tools that analyse delays rather than eliminate them. If vendors keep selling new versions of old problems, nothing really improves. If there’s no accountability for poor digital performance, then change remains optional. The infinity loop of stagnation continues, because no external force is breaking the cycle.

This is the paradox: councils need to measure digital maturity to justify modernisation, but their outdated systems prevent them from gathering the necessary data to measure it in the first place. It’s a self-reinforcing loop where the very thing required for change is also what’s missing.

Because their systems weren’t designed for visibility, automation, or workflow orchestration. They can’t see inefficiencies, let alone fix them. Without data, they can’t prove inefficiency. Without proof, they can’t secure funding or political backing. And without funding, the cycle repeats itself, indefinitely.

Acknowledging the paradox is the first step in resolving it. But understanding the loop is not enough. Breaking it requires addressing its key crossover point. The moment councils reach the decision to modernise, they are faced with two paths: real transformation or superficial change.

Too often, instead of committing to real digital transformation, councils opt for surface-level improvements. Things like new UI overlays, minor software upgrades, or repackaged versions of the same inefficiencies. This is the point where the loop bends back on itself, feeding the illusion of progress while ensuring the underlying issues remain untouched.

Once you understand the infinity loop, it can be broken. The key is recognising the cycle for what it is: a self-perpetuating system sustained by outdated structures, low accountability, and misplaced incentives. Councils that make an intentional break from short-term fixes and invest in true digital transformation can escape it entirely.

This means realising that a different architectural approach is required. One that may still involve existing vendors but demands modern, API-driven, event-based digital platforms designed for automation and real-time measurement, rather than just repackaged inefficiencies.

It requires benchmarking not as a bureaucratic exercise but as a tool for real accountability. It means treating digital service efficiency as a core function, not an afterthought.

A Way Forward

The fundamental step in breaking the infinity loop is addressing the lack of competitive pressure. Since councils don’t operate in a competitive market where failure leads to lost customers, external forces must create accountability. This is where regulatory benchmarking and public scrutiny must play a larger part.

Regulatory bodies can enforce mandatory benchmarking, requiring councils to publicly report on key digital performance metrics. Things like transaction completion times, automation rates, and service efficiency. For example, similar to how housing availability metrics are reported in urban development policies, councils could be required to report on digital service performance in a standardised format. Making this information transparent forces underperforming councils to justify their delays and inefficiencies, driving political and operational consequences for inaction.

Public scrutiny also plays a role. If residents had access to clear, comparable data on how their council’s digital services rank against others, they could apply direct pressure on leadership. Digital transformation would no longer be a facile IT discussion but a broader issue of governance and accountability. This approach mirrors public hospital performance reporting, where publishing wait times and patient outcomes has influenced hospital funding and operational reforms.

Funding models must also shift. Instead of allocating digital investment based on historical budget cycles, state and federal governments should tie funding to measurable improvements in digital service maturity. A model similar to school funding reforms, where investment is tied to student performance and infrastructure upgrades, could be applied.

Councils that modernise successfully should receive greater investment, creating a real incentive to adopt best practices rather than maintain outdated systems. While some may argue this creates inequality, the real issue is leadership accountability. Where there is an equitable opportunity to secure more funding and improve services within their LGA, council leaders must take responsibility for making that change, rather than using excuses to justify inaction.

Finally, procurement reform is essential. Many councils default to legacy vendors due to risk aversion and outdated procurement policies. If contracts prioritised real-time service efficiency, interoperability, and automation, councils would be incentivised to pursue true modernisation and the companies that can deliver it, instead of cycling through the same vendors and technology. This could work similarly to renewable energy policies that tie government contracts to sustainable practices, rewarding forward-thinking providers rather than reinforcing outdated procurement models.

Bottom Line: Local governments won’t change until the system forces them to. If regulatory oversight, public scrutiny, funding incentives, and procurement policies align, councils will no longer have the option to maintain inefficiency. That’s the way everyone else does it. So breaking the infinity loop is possible. But only if the pressure to modernise from those in charge becomes real.

Rather than fostering widespread innovation, these regulations have inadvertently created a policy-first economy, where compliance dictates the rules of engagement, and only institutions that can afford the regulatory burden, like large banks, financial firms, and federal governments, have been able to fully participate.

We are now at a transition point where these programs should begin to open up across industries. But how will this shift occur, and what are the real benefits? If financial institutions have successfully implemented digital identity, secure transactions, and real-time data sharing, why haven’t other sectors followed suit at the same pace? Has digital public infrastructure evolved from an enabler of innovation into a constraint that slows broader adoption?

The Regulatory Capture of Technology

Over the past two decades, banking and finance have undergone significant transformation due to regulatory pressures such as AML, KYC, and Open Banking initiatives like PSD2 in Europe. These policies have forced financial institutions to refine their digital identity verification processes, develop secure payments infrastructure, and standardise customer data management.

Centralised identity verification systems, digital wallets, and interbank data-sharing standards have emerged as byproducts of these regulatory requirements, enabling more secure transactions, enhanced fraud detection, and a seamless customer experience.

Importantly, these innovations have also been heavily driven by federal governments to foster new markets, stimulate economic development, and facilitate cross-border transactions. Especially in the context of digital IDs. While the underlying technologies, such as identity management, security, master data management (MDM), and integration, are not new, their application has largely been focused in fintech and shaped by top-down regulatory mandates rather than organic technological evolution.

Once a dominant policy position is established at the federal level, it can become self-contained within “the bubble”, limiting its applicability outside of that regulatory sphere.

Policymakers, despite introducing valuable compliance requirements, can often lack a deep understanding of the technology itself. Especially if those policy makers reside outside a central digital agency. This can lead to a misconception that they have created something fundamentally new when, in reality, they have only dictated the terms under which existing technologies must now operate. Usually within a specific sector.

This results in a critical challenge. Federal regulatory frameworks capture and reshape universal technologies, transforming them from flexible solutions into rigid compliance mechanisms. Then, instead of being widely adopted across industries, these technologies become locked into a policy-first paradigm that prioritises oversight, control, and national economic interests.

The consequence is that identity management, security, and data integration become policy artifacts rather than practical, adaptable tools that could benefit a wider range of sectors.

Furthermore, once these policy-driven frameworks take hold, they become difficult to repurpose for other contexts. Case in point, the financial sector, driven by compliance, has conformed to these frameworks, reinforcing the federal policy model rather than enabling broader innovation.

I think this dynamic creates a bottleneck where policy becomes the product, and success is measured by adherence rather than effectiveness or adaptability.

As a result, other sectors, struggle to access and apply these technologies in ways that fit their unique needs. As an example, I don’t know a single executive in the local government sector that thinks that KYC has any applicability to their business.

The Global Push for Digital Public Infrastructure: But Then What?

Practically, every country now seeks a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) strategy that defines their approach to Digital Identity, Payment Systems, and a National Data Exchange, aiming to establish themselves as global FinTech hubs. But once these foundational elements are in place, what comes next?

If the original goal of regulatory-driven frameworks was to broaden economic opportunity, enhance security, and drive innovation, why has following this same regulatory-first blueprint led many countries to build infrastructure optimised for compliance rather than innovation?

The fundamental challenge is that while DPI components are critical enablers, they do not inherently generate new economic opportunities or services on their own. Part of the issue is that DPI has not evolved as a true PaaS model, where digital identity, payments, and data exchange are simply services within a broader, adaptable digital ecosystem. Instead, stakeholders have continued applying new policies to existing technologies within legacy service delivery models, rather than allowing DPI to evolve at the pace of modern platform-driven innovation.

This raises a deeper concern: Are we treating policy as the product, rather than using it to enable the evolution of digital infrastructure itself? Once a nation establishes its DPI and FinTech hub, the challenge becomes in creating infrastructure that truly empowers citizens and businesses, not just the compliance-driven ecosystem itslef.

By focusing on compliance rather than adaptability, countries risk creating a policy-driven digital economy rather than one that is responsive to actual economic needs. If regulatory frameworks are to truly enable economic opportunity, they cannot be confined to the financial sector alone.

Policymakers must recognise that policy does not create technology. Technology exists independently of policy. The challenge is whether governments can proactively adapt and extend its benefits beyond the narrow confines of federal oversight and financial regulation, without over-reach.

The Practical Application of KYC Principles in Local Government

I mentioned KYC so let me quickly break that out. While financial institutions have successfully consolidated customer data into unified, regulatory-compliant frameworks, local governments remain encumbered by legacy systems that hinder a single view of the citizen.

A typical local government may store data across multiple, disconnected platforms for rates and property management, libraries, regulatory applications and permits, social services, and utilities. The absence of integrated identity verification leads to inefficiencies, redundancy, and suboptimal citizen experiences.

Unlike the financial sector, local governments have not been subject to the same regulatory pressure to unify customer data. Instead, modernisation efforts are often constrained by budget limitations, political cycles, and a lack of overarching policy direction at the state (insert your own state-based LG Association here), and federal (ALGA) level.

However, as digital government services continue to expand, the need for a standardised, secure, and interoperable approach to citizen data management becomes increasingly critical.

Master Data Management (MDM) projects provide a pathway for local governments to apply KYC principles to customer data. By consolidating citizen records across disparate systems (rather than blindly following the idea that they exist within a single NAR within a single ERP), local councils and municipalities can create a single source of truth, improving service delivery, reducing administrative inefficiencies, and enabling more data-driven decision-making.

One example of this in practice is the implementation of Digital IDs in city governments where MDM has been deployed. These councils can invite constituents to adopt a Digital ID that serves as a unified credential for interacting with local government services, covering everything from gym or library access and parking permits to rate payments and reg services.

If a resident moves outside the Local Government Area (LGA), their Digital ID is revoked, archived, or disposed of according to regulated records management policies. This not only strengthens security and compliance but also ensures that citizen data management aligns with best practice governance frameworks.

Secure authentication and digital identity management, key pillars of FinTech innovation, can significantly enhance public sector interactions, making services more accessible, personalised, and efficient. By applying these principles, local governments can modernise their digital service ecosystems without being constrained by compliance-driven innovation models.

Bottom Line

As governments push Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) beyond finance and into other sectors, they may well face some resistance. Not because digital infrastructure is not right or unwanted, but because it has been framed as a compliance tool rather than an innovation enabler. Or simply because for years they have ignored every industry except finance.

The centralisation and digitisation of every individual’s interactions with government raise legitimate concerns about overreach, control, and unintended consequences. I think that means that if DPI remains a policy-first system, it will struggle to gain the trust and adoption needed for broader societal impact.

So the core question remains: Has policy become the product? And if so, what does that say about the true intent and effectiveness of these regulations?

The answer is pretty simple really. Free the policy through some strong PaaS partnerships. Then let the PaaS providers drive penetration through their industry practices.

Otherwise if countries do not rethink how DPI strategies evolve beyond compliance, they risk creating a digital governance system that serves policy objectives rather than economic or societal needs. And for DPI to truly benefit everyone, these frameworks must be reclaimed as tools for innovation, not just as regulatory instruments for compliance.

Local and state governments, the closest levels of governance to the people, are frequently overlooked in broader policy discussions, despite being responsible for implementing the day-to-day consequences of federal decisions.

If Canada were to join the United States, local governments in both countries would face a significant imperative to adapt to new governance structures, tax frameworks, and regulatory environments.

This transformation would require municipalities and local authorities to rethink how they manage public services, citizen engagement, and internal operations, potentially forcing a significant transformation, albeit with a need for gradual but comprehensive shifts, in both systems and structures.

Historically, the North American city government market has been distinct from those in other regions such as the UK, Europe, Australia, and Asia. While differences in size and scope play a role, the primary distinction arises from the unique federal structures of the United States and Canada, rather than, for example, the use of the Torrens System1.

North American local authorities possess significant autonomy, enabling them to enforce complex and diverse regulatory requirements. They also provide a broader range of services, including utilities, many of which have been removed from the local government public sector in Australia through decades of deregulation, amalgamation, and de-amalgamation.

In contrast to regions where local governments typically operate within more centralised national frameworks, North American municipalities are accustomed to a higher degree of decentralisation and independence. Any attempt to merge these governance structures would fundamentally alter this dynamic, resembling a local amalgamation process but on a far larger and more disruptive scale.

From a technological standpoint, such a shift would demand a complete reevaluation of how cities manage governance, regulations, and finances. Incumbent software providers and an army of systems integrators would be tasked with adapting legacy products to handle cross-border data models (and integrations), new regulatory landscapes, and increasingly diverse population bases.

It could mean overhauling everything from taxation (revenue) policies to utilities management. U.S. cities, in turn, would need to consider the complexity of new territories with differing demographics, languages, and local laws.

The result, and I guess my main point? A vast, fragmented governance model that would prove incredibly difficult to manage within existing govtech systems.

Local governments would not only need to retool their systems to accommodate these changes but would also have to deal with the strain on existing technology infrastructures and service providers, many of which are not equipped for such complexity.

The North American city government market2 is extensive, with thousands of municipalities using a wide range of software solutions to manage daily operations. However, similar to the Australian, New Zealand, and UK markets, the core systems in North America are dominated by a few key brands. Additionally, much like in these regions, a significant portion of this software is built on legacy systems and outdated technologies, which often struggle to meet the evolving demands of modern governance and service delivery.

Faced with potential structural shifts, could legacy software providers adapt? Could newer, more agile competitors take their place? With much of today’s software rooted in 20th-century thinking, are there emerging solutions better suited to help local authorities navigate the challenges of the future?

Many traditional software solutions used in local government were designed for business models that were already showing their age decades ago. These systems often feature rigid, hard-coded data models and workflows tailored to the specific regulatory frameworks and service delivery models of a single jurisdiction.

Primarily focused on core functions like property, revenue, financial management, permitting, and public services, they were built with a narrow, localised perspective rather than with flexibility or scalability in mind.

This approach is not unique to local government; it reflects how state-level government systems are often designed to meet specific mandates rather than being built to adapt to changing policies or to operate across in cross-border contexts.

This hypothetical scenario, while dramatic and particularly unsettling for Canadians regardless of political persuasion, highlights a critical point. It underscores the need for city government leaders to evaluate whether their current systems are equipped to handle increasing complexity. If these systems struggle with routine changes, how can they possibly manage the unpredictable disruptions that are sure to arise?

Local governments already contend with a relentless array of challenges, including economic shifts, regulatory changes, natural disasters, population growth, and the evolving needs of their communities and citizens.

In many cases, the answer is clear: legacy systems are simply not designed to scale and adapt to the demands of today’s fast-paced, ever-changing environment.

Cloud is Not Enough

As governance structures grow more complex and varied, software solutions built on static, inflexible architectures will increasingly fail to meet the demands of modern municipalities. Local governments require systems that can scale, adapt, and evolve to accommodate shifting regulations, diverse populations, and dynamic service delivery models. The software providers that will succeed in this changing landscape are those offering modular, scalable solutions designed to evolve with their clients' needs.

However, it's becoming clear that simply being "cloud-based" is no longer sufficient. While cloud technology offers scalability, there are plenty of cloud solutions that still lack the flexibility required to handle the intricate complexities of local government.

The future lies in Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions. These platforms go beyond traditional cloud models by providing the modularity, flexibility, and seamless integration capabilities that modern local governments require. PaaS-based architectures are inherently designed to scale and adapt, allowing governments to integrate with other tools and systems effortlessly while responding to new challenges and regulatory changes.

As local governance grows increasingly fragmented and dynamic, PaaS solutions will emerge as the new architectural standard, empowering govtech to effectively support and adapt to a modern environment where disruption and constant change have become the new norm.

Vision or Reality?

The vision of flexible, adaptable, and truly integrated systems may seem like a pipe dream to many in local government. After all, for decades, the sector has been constrained by rigid legacy systems and cloud solutions that only partially address its unique challenges.

The obvious question is, “Does a solution actually exist that can deliver on the promise of modern govtech or are we still chasing an ideal that remains out of reach?” The simple answer (to my own question), is yes. PaaS solutions do exist and they are being increasingly utilised by local government authorities.

One example is Agilyx MUNIvers, a compelling entrant in the city government software market. MUNIvers not only promises to bridge the gap between traditional systems and the evolving demands of local government but also demonstrates the ability to do so on a global scale, spanning markets as diverse as North America and Australia. Built on the Salesforce PaaS foundation, MUNIvers is real and a tangible solution built for the complexities of today.

Its solution architecture integrates property, rating and regulatory management utilising a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) backbone. Agilyx even supports the implementation and management of a Salesforce-based finance system (Certinia, formerly FinancialForce). Moreover, it enters a market where Salesforce is already well-established in the local government market through partner solutions in the CRM space. Same platform, strong partner network.

You can clearly see the emergence of a new economic market taking shape, along with the first steps toward transforming how legacy govtech challenges are addressed.

MUNIvers is precisely the kind of PaaS-based solution that can adapt to both the large-scale shifts in governance and the incremental, ongoing operational changes that are characteristic of every city government. Its architectural flexibility ensures it can handle both immediate disruptions and the steady evolution that municipalities face over time.

The platform’s Salesforce foundation also offers a major advantage over other contemporary cloud-based solutions in use across the sector in both North America and Australia. That is, better integration with other systems (see Nobody Ever Got Fired for why this is critical), along with the ability to deliver modern services in ways that traditional, monolithic software systems simply cannot achieve.

The PaaS architecture enables cities to more easily add new modules, integrate third-party tools, and adapt their systems to meet emerging regulatory requirements. This adaptability will be key in an era where municipal governments are likely to experience rapid and unpredictable change.

What it Means for Australia and New Zealand

Originally designed for the North American (Canadian) market, the question now is whether Agilyx MUNIvers could also play a role in the Australian and Pacific region. Interestingly, the kernel for the solution actually began in Australia, sparked by a council-led discussion in South Australia.

This is not unusual. Councils often engage in discussions about shared challenges and potential solutions with service providers. I think what set these conversations apart is the ability to do something about the growing frustration at the persistent lack of meaningful progress in modernising systems, streamlining workflows, and improving service delivery.

Today, the sector is impatient with the inadequacy of current solutions to address the significant gap between expectations and reality. For those working in the sector, this disconnect comes as no surprise. It is a well-known and persistent issue.

The bottom line is that the next generation of leading software providers in local government will be built on PaaS architectures. This will transform local government software into a truly global sector. And that changes everything.

The Agilyx MUNIvers platform stands out architecturally, offering clear advantages for Australian councils seeking to enhance their information and business systems. Its adaptability positions it as one of the first genuine multi-regional contenders in this space. Beyond its immediate potential, it also serves as a blueprint for the future of govtech.

Hypothetical or not, the geopolitical shifts in North America starkly reveal the fragility of govtech systems and highlight the pressing challenges confronting local governments worldwide. These events are a reminder that the next unexpected disruption, one we should have anticipated, will again test our readiness as govtech leaders.

The term "metaverse" may no longer dominate headlines like it did just a short time ago, but it actually never went away. Its core principles have continued to evolve and found a home in multiple industries, where it has been delivering real, practical value.

As the concept matures, it has shifted from futuristic hype to practical applications and taken root in industries that rely on the integration of both digital and physical assets. This evolution is shaping a new era by uniting two traditionally separate domains: Corporate IT and Engineering IT.

Historically isolated, these areas are now converging through advanced Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) architectures, and creating a better foundation on which data and physical assets can finally interact.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) are also playing a role. But at the heart of the change, it is PaaS that is enabling efficient integration across different organisational functions and emerging as the true driver of this modern workforce revolution.

The Challenge of Supporting the Deskless Workforce

For decades, the separation between Engineering IT and Corporate IT has led to disconnected systems that have largely overlooked the needs of deskless workers. These employees work on the front lines or behind the scenes in roles as diverse as maintenance, field service, and production. In local government its pretty much the outdoor workforce.

Engineering IT has traditionally focused on physical assets like machinery, equipment, facilities, and infrastructure, managing these with a portfolio of specialised networks, network protocols, controllers, computer models, and data. Meanwhile, Corporate IT has managed digital assets such as company data, software, and online systems, primarily supporting office-based employees and customer interactions. One side focuses on operational assets, while the other centers on customer engagement.

These two domains have traditionally run on separate networks, each tightly controlled with minimal integration, making a true unified approach to operations difficult. This lack of connection between the engineering operations and IT teams not only makes workflows inefficient, if not impossible, but doubles the effort and resources required to keep these systems distinct.

For the customers of these systems, the deskless worker, this divide can mean limited access to the same tools, data, and support that office-based teams receive leaving them underserved in a system designed to support corporate functions, rather than the hands-on, physical work they perform.

How PaaS Helps Build Cross-Functional Dependency

The ability to digitise physical assets, for example a digital twin, is what has transformed operations. A digital twin is just a virtual representation (a digital model) of a physical asset, or system, or process, that is continuously updated with real-time data from its physical counterpart. Augmented Reality (AR) tech then allows workers to interact with both the physical and digital versions in an immersive and natural way.

The greatest challenge in expanding the adoption of these advanced technologies has been integrating data1 and data models from primarily engineering-focused technologies into core business systems.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) architectures, like ServiceNow’s Now Platform, are now transforming this landscape by establishing a common environment for both digital and digitised physical assets to interact.

Equally important for organisations using these platforms is that the digitisation of assets has made engineering and IT mutually dependent: engineering will need to lean on IT for data management and automation support, while IT will need to lean on engineering to connect digital systems with physical assets.

In other words, successful operations in a contemporary sense, now require more collaboration between these traditionally separate areas, as digital tools and data have become essential to managing physical assets.

By connecting PaaS to corporate software systems that track everything from inventory to maintenance schedules, workers can use AR to stay digitally connected to machines and corporate systems in real time, whether on the factory floor, at a project site, in remote facilities, or even in a shopping aisle or loading dock.

This integration delivers significant time and efficiency gains, resulting in clear financial benefits over current practices.

AR’s Role in the Deskless Workforce Revolution

The biggest beneficiaries of this transformation are deskless workers, who represent over 80% of the global workforce but have long been underserved by traditional IT solutions.

These workers aren’t only in private sector roles like mining or factory jobs; they include people you see daily in supermarkets, retail, and other close-to-consumer businesses. Deskless workers also play vital roles in local governments, utilities, and government business enterprises (GBEs).

Through AI-enabled PaaS and with the support of AR, these workers now have access to real-time data and collaborative tools that are as transformative for field operations as office digitisation first was just a few decades ago.

Enteprise grade AR Innovations from well known tech companies like TeamViewer through to lesser known Siemens solutions are playing their part in allowing organisations to bridge digital and physical disciplines and equipping all parts of the workforce to thrive in a connected, purpose-driven ecosystem. Here are some examples of solutions bringing these elements together:

• TeamViewer Frontline: TeamViewer is a company well-known for their “you-see-what-I-see” remote connectivity technical assistance and helpdesk support software. IT agents use it all the time to “remote in” to your desktop. This is the company that helped many organisations to steer a business continuity path through the work-from-home tidal wave during the pandemic. TeamViewer Frontline is a prominent example of how AR can enhance workflows for deskless workers by integrating digital overlays into physical tasks. Frontline’s wearable, AR-based tools enable technicians, factory operators, and warehouse staff to access real-time information on a range of workflows to ultimately improve task efficiency and empowers cross-functional collaboration by facilitating communication between on-site and off-site teams.

• ServiceNow Field Service Management (FSM):
  ServiceNow’s Field Service Management (FSM) could be paired with a solution like TeamViewer Frontline to deliver an augmented reality (AR) experience for field service workers. While FSM provides the digital backbone for task coordination, workflow management (for example, mobile access to work orders, step-by-step instructions, and live collaboration tools), and IoT data integration, TeamViewer Frontline would bring in the AR capabilities and system of record functions. This combination would enable a comprehensive field service solution where ServiceNow handles the organisation-wide workflow and data integration (for example through to financial transactions), while TeamViewer Frontline enhances hands-on tasks with AR-driven support, making it ideal for complex field operations requiring digital coordination, visual assistance and operational workflow management.

• PTC Vuforia: The Vuforia platform from PTC is an example of AR tools that assist automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing industries in overlaying digital information onto physical spaces. Vuforia’s Chalk app, which allows remote experts to annotate and guide users in real time, and Expert Capture, which captures complex workflows for later reuse, both support cross-functional tasks and real-time AI insights. These capabilities bridge IT and engineering, providing both fields with tools for precision, accuracy, and consistent data flow. While it does not produce its own wearable hardware it is designed to integrate with various AR-compatible devices to deliver immersive experiences. For example, a notable partnership includes support for (Microsoft) HoloLens and HoloLens 2, enabling users to access AR content through Microsoft's mixed reality headsets.

• Microsoft D365 Guides and Remote Assist: D365 then integrates AR and AI to drive digital and physical convergence in hands-on industries. With Dynamics Guides, workers can receive holographic, step-by-step instructions using HoloLens, enabling cross-platform collaboration and real-time training. Remote Assist connects technicians to experts in real time, making complex tasks achievable without expert travel. This seamless blend of AI-driven remote assistance and AR visualisation exemplifies the shift from hype to practical, outcome-driven solutions that can be applied across regional and remote operations and jurisdictions.

• Siemens Teamcenter and Mindsphere: Siemens leverages its Teamcenter and Mindsphere platforms to enhance digital twin and IoT capabilities. Teamcenter creates a single digital thread across the product lifecycle, while Mindsphere collects and analyses real-time data from physical machines. Together, they enable companies to simulate, monitor, and optimise physical assets through an AI-powered interface. These tools integrate with PaaS solutions, reinforcing the cross-functional capabilities that empower real-time, cross-platform flow of information essential to the industrial metaverse. Siemens' Teamcenter and Mindsphere platforms do not produce their own wearable hardware. Instead, they integrate with various wearable devices through partnerships. For example, Siemens has collaborated with companies like TeamViewer to incorporate augmented reality (AR) solutions into their platforms.

My Take

Organisations exploring Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) along with augmented reality (AR) and AI should consider PaaS as the foundation of their industrial metaverse framework.

PaaS acts as the core technology that unifies AR, wearable tech, and AI-ready data, enabling companies to empower their deskless workforce by creating a seamless environment where machines, workers, and systems can effectively collaborate. It literally bridges the traditional divides across technology investments.

To fully realise the transformative benefits of integrating these capabilities, strong technology leadership is essential. Organisations should ensure their executive leaders, including tech leaders like the CIO, are engaged as primary stakeholders in these initiatives.

Not just because they play a crucial role in overseeing the integration of solutions, but because without executive support, these technologies risk adding to the long list of siloed investments keeping engineering and IT disconnected and operational costs high.

While both methods have had their merits, the unspoken truth is that neither approach is working as well as it should. Single vendor solutions can lock councils into rigid and inflexible process and data management structures, while BoB solutions can lead to fragmented operations and functional silos, especially where ongoing under-investment is the norm.

Councils are finding that neither of these traditional approaches fully reflects or meets the evolving needs of councils today. They can’t deliver the flexibility, cross-functional integration, and future-readiness required - at a price point - that council officers need to thrive.

It’s the sector’s dirty little secret: while ERP and BoB have been the dominant options for decades, they’re quietly leaving councils with systems that are difficult to manage, expensive to maintain, and unprepared for future demands.

There has long been a demand for an approach that combines the best features of both by offering workflow flexibility without the complexity of managing multiple systems, and by delivering the kind of integration that single-vendor ERP promises but often falls short on.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is part of the answer to the shortcomings of both traditional approaches, and it is already reshaping how local governments function by offering a more effective and scalable way to manage a council’s operational environment.

For councils looking to modernise their business systems and move beyond the old school debate, PaaS offers a way to confront the limitations of closed ecosystems and embrace a modern framework that meets today’s challenges head-on.

The Limitations of Traditional ERP and Best of Breed Approaches

Traditional ERP: A Closed Ecosystem

It is a fact that single-source local government ERP systems usually operate in closed ecosystems, limiting councils to the vendor's own suite of applications and the narrow partner network that provides support and services. For one major player it has been their differentiating go to market for decades.

While the business appeal of an ERP lies in the idea of an all-in-one system that integrates everything from finance to HR to procurement, the reality usually falls short, especially for smaller governments with more specific needs.

Firstly, traditional single-source local government ERP systems can present challenges, but the real issue isn’t long-term relationships with a vendor—it's the lack of flexibility and innovation caused by vendor lock-in and the dependence on an unrealised or restrictive roadmap or release cycle. While being with any software vendor for an extended period isn't inherently negative (it does have many benefits), councils may find their ability to grow and innovate constrained if they are limited by the vendor's offerings or delayed feature development.

Secondly, while many software vendors claim that their systems can integrate with any other, the reality is often much more complex. Initial integrations can be difficult due to proprietary protocols, limited APIs, and a lack of essential tools, leaving councils to navigate complex and costly connections.

Even when successful, maintaining these integrations becomes a major challenge as systems evolve. Upgrades can introduce changes to APIs, data structures, and security protocols, requiring constant updates to the integration. This ongoing maintenance, along with the need to test and adapt custom connectors, makes it difficult for councils to keep systems functioning smoothly. The result is that instead of focusing on innovation and growth, significant resources must be dedicated to managing and troubleshooting the integrations. Over time, this complexity undermines flexibility, slows down the adoption of new technologies, and diminishes the value of the system as a whole.

Thirdly is the issue of partner availability. Many single-source local government ERP vendors have limited support networks that are concentrated in specific regions, which can cause delays in obtaining the necessary assistance or expertise, especially for smaller or geographically dispersed councils.

Not least of all is the way in which the rigidity of customisation presents a major hurdle, especially in cross-functional capability. These systems are often difficult to tailor to meet unique council requirements, and when customisation is needed, it frequently involves costly consulting or vendor intervention, further complicating and increasing the cost of implementation and maintenance.

Best of Breed: A Fragmented Landscape

By comparison, the "best of breed" approach—simply choosing different systems for different functions—was once heralded as the solution to single-source ERP's inflexibility. By selecting specialised solutions for specific business needs, local governments could theoretically optimise their operations. However, the downsides often outweigh the benefits for small to mid-sized governments.

The "best of breed" approach brings its own challenges, especially when it comes to integration. Managing systems from multiple vendors can create significant difficulties in ensuring smooth interoperability, particularly in under-resourced or under-funded organisations. These integration challenges can slow down operations and make it harder to maintain a cohesive technology environment, ultimately resulting in a poor user experience (unhappy employees or customers).

Another drawback is the potential for higher maintenance costs when supporting multiple systems, particularly in organisations with poor application portfolio management. This approach benefits from specialised integration skills and middleware to handle system connectivity, operational efficiencies, and ongoing system management. Ironically, these same capabilities are also essential when using single-source ERP systems, highlighting that integration and management expertise are fundamental to modern enterprises.

In my view the biggest drawback of a poorly managed BoB environment is the potential for a fragmented user experience. Employees may be required to switch between different interfaces, workflows, and processes across multiple platforms, which reduces productivity and creates frustration.

The Case for a New Approach: PaaS-Based Solutions

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a modern alternative that combines the benefits of both single-source ERP and best of breed systems while mitigating their respective downsides. PaaS allows local governments to build and deploy modular applications within a flexible, scalable cloud infrastructure, offering the best of both worlds: integration and specialisation without the complexity or lock-in.

PaaS offers several key benefits that address many of the challenges found in traditional approaches. First, PaaS operates within an open ecosystem, providing a standards-based environment that easily integrates third-party solutions – even competitive PaaS solutions. This openness eliminates the closed ecosystem problem commonly associated with traditional ERPs, enabling greater flexibility in building a customised technology landscape.

One of the standout advantages of PaaS is its modular flexibility. That just means that local governments can adopt a composable architecture, allowing them to deploy only the functional applications and workflows they need, and expand these systems as their organisational requirements grow.

In addition, for every council that understands its true cost of IT service delivery, PaaS is cost efficient.

It eliminates the need for on-premises infrastructure to run business applications, which includes both the upfront costs and ongoing maintenance expenses, and the DR infrastructure requirements, making it a desirable longitudinal choice for resource-constrained local governments1.

Furthermore, PaaS providers typically have an extensive partner support network, ensuring that even regional governments can access the expertise and assistance they need in a timely manner, regardless of location.

Finally, PaaS environments offer customisation through low-code/no-code solutions that allow councils to more quickly tailor systems to meet their stakeholder requirements. This removes much of the dependency on vendor intervention for customisation.

A New Era of Business Systems for Local Government

Local governments no longer have to choose between an all-encompassing single-source ERP system or a fragmented ecosystem of best of breed solutions. With the rise of PaaS platforms, organisations can take a more agile, modular approach to technology, combining the integration benefits of ERP with the flexibility of specialised systems. By moving beyond the outdated "best of breed" mindset, and adopting fit-for-purpose, composable, or modular ecosystems, small to mid-sized councils can better position themselves for long-term success in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

This isn't just a concept for the future—Platform as a Service (PaaS) is already transforming local governments across Australia, providing tangible benefits and streamlining operations. They are using it to enhance customer experiences, improve cross-departmental collaboration, reduce reliance on manual processes, achieve faster response times for customer, community and employee requests, and improve service delivery through automation. These are all lead indicators for significant cost savings.

PaaS is not an emerging trend. It is a mature solution already disrupting most council functions, and scaling to meet a variety of needs. It also represents the future operational model of local government business systems by delivering the non-functional capabilities (like portals and workflows and automations and integrations and analytics) that traditional solutions struggle to offer in isolation.

For that reason, the conversation should no longer be about choosing the best software tool for each function, but about how the organisation can now build an adaptable, integrated architecture that can grow with the needs of the community.

Reach out through the app or on LinkedIn if you’d like to dive deeper into potential solutions or to understand the broader considerations for these type of solutions in your corporate systems roadmap. Or perhaps you know someone exploring this area. If so, feel free to share this link with them.

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