Convincing your council or local government team to try something new? It can feel like wrangling a committee to agree on Friday’s lunch order – everyone has an opinion and there’s always a budget to watch.

But when it comes to adopting process management tools like Flowingly, a little extra effort upfront can lead to less admin pain, fewer headaches, and happier communities on the other side. 

Let’s dive into some simple ways you can inspire your council leaders, department heads, and colleagues to get excited about better ways of working.

Why Should Councils Even Care About Process Management Tools? 

Local government teams have a lot to juggle: community grants, building approvals, service requests, compliance… You name it. Where things get sticky is keeping track of all those moving parts, especially when you’re slogging through spreadsheets or chasing emails across departments. 

Enter process management tools. They take the chaos out of your daily grind, letting you automate the dull jobs (think: approval workflows, status tracking) and focus more on work that really helps your community. Not only does that mean faster response times and better compliance, it’s also less stress for everyone involved. 

But how do you get everyone on board? Start here.

1. Zero in on Your Team’s Real Pain Points 

Instead of bombarding folks with features and sales pitches, begin with what actually causes friction in your workflows. Does reporting feel endless? Are community requests slipping through the cracks? Are you stuck in a never-ending email loop for approvals? 

For example: 

• A rural New Zealand council might see grant applications sitting in limbo for weeks on end.
• An Australian metro council could lose hours consolidating compliance data for state audits. 

Pointing out these everyday pain points helps people see that process management tools aren’t just ‘nice to have’ – they’re a practical fix for the stuff that keeps you up at night.

2. Show the Money (and the Time, and the Headspace) 

Let’s face it: council budgets are tight and everyone wants to know, “What do we actually get out of this investment?” 

Be specific: 

• Show how moving from paper or spreadsheet-driven workflows to digital can save staff hours (and the grey hairs that go with them). 
• Share real numbers. “Automating building consent approvals could save 200 hours a month. That’s whole weeks’ worth of staff time, ready to put toward new projects.” 

The more you can point to actual hours, dollars, or improved service measures, the more convincing your case will be.

3. Share Stories from Councils Like Yours 

People trust stories from peers way more than flashy marketing stats. Do some digging: Has another council in NZ or Australia already taken the plunge with workflow automation? What changed for them? 

Huon Valley Council in Australia halved the time it took to onboard new staff by digitising their core processes. Otorohanga District Council in New Zealand found regulators breathing easier knowing LGOIMA requests were now processed in just five days instead of 20.

Even small wins at similar councils can help tip the scales.

4. Tackle Concerns With a Human Touch 

No one likes it when something new crashes into their daily routine – especially if it means learning yet another system. Address this early by being upfront and empathetic. 

Acknowledge the learning curve. Share how Flowingly (or your chosen tool) is designed to be easy for everyone, not just tech whizzes. Offer hands-on training, and let folks know there’s support around the corner if they get stuck. 

Frame it as a helping hand: fewer manual tasks and a clearer view of what needs doing. Not a “replace the team” scenario, just a better way to get the jobs done. 

5. Highlight the Wins for Residents and for You 

At the end of the day, local government exists to serve the community. Always circle back to how these tools help customers: faster permit turnaround, fewer mistakes, clearer communication. 

But don’t forget to remind your team what’s in it for them – less busywork, an easier time meeting compliance, and more bandwidth for projects that spark pride. 

For example: “Imagine if residents could lodge a service request online and check the status anytime, no calls needed, no chasing for updates. Or if your finance team could sail through audit prep instead of drowning under paperwork.”

6. Make Buy-In a Team Sport 

Don’t do all the heavy lifting yourself. Get enthusiastic peers involved and encourage champions across departments. Run short workshops to brainstorm process pain points, and be sure to celebrate (even the small) wins together. 

When people see colleagues getting excited about improvements, rather than just ‘management’ pushing change – it’s much easier to get them on board. 

When you speak your team’s language, focus on real problems, and bring a bit of humanity to the conversation, moving to better, smarter workflows isn’t just possible – it’s inevitable.

And as councils across New Zealand and Australia are starting to discover, these changes really do help teams deliver more for the people they serve. 

If onboarding is your council’s welcome mat, offboarding is the emergency exit – and it better work in a fire.

That was the big takeaway from our recent Flow & Tell session with Bay of Plenty Regional Council, where Senior Business Analyst Gill walked us through how they transformed their outdated leavers process into one of their most efficient, most visible, and most-loved workflows.

What started as a clunky, eight-year-old process sitting in Objective is now one of the most-loved workflows at the council—complete with automated handovers, built-in visibility, and zero manual emails.

So why should your council automate employee offboarding? Here are four reasons to make it your next automation project.

1. Offboarding is a Compliance Minefield

Offboarding is packed with compliance and security responsibilities. If a step gets skipped – like revoking system access, it opens the door to unnecessary costs and data risk. For many councils, there’s no single source of truth for tracking where the process is at or what’s been done.

By automating the offboarding workflow, councils can ensure that nothing gets missed. Built-in task assignment, visibility, and escalation paths mean every box is ticked, even if someone’s on leave or working remotely.

2. It’s Prime Real Estate for Automation Wins

At Bay of Plenty Regional Council, the team rebuilt their leavers workflow in just a few days using Flowingly. Most of that time wasn’t spent building – it was spent aligning with stakeholders and updating the content. Once live, the process eliminated a heap of manual tasks, especially around email creation and follow-ups.

Pre-configured emails now go out automatically. Staff no longer have to copy-paste template text from Outlook or remember to send internal notifications. Everything flows in the background, triggered by a single form submission.

3. Visibility = Less Risk, Less Stress

One of the most frustrating parts of offboarding is the follow-up. HR teams end up chasing ICT for updates, reminding team leaders about final dates, or nudging people who’ve forgotten to complete their steps.

With automated nudges and status visibility built into the Flowingly dashboard, HR can now keep things moving without awkward follow-ups. Delegations are easy to apply, tasks can be reassigned instantly, and no one’s wondering, “Has that laptop been returned yet?”

4. You Don’t Need to Be a Tech Wizard

The kicker? BOPRC’s team didn’t need developers or a giant IT project to get this done. They used Flowingly’s drag-and-drop builder, updated the workflow themselves, and can tweak it any time without calling in the cavalry.

That’s the kind of no-code empowerment councils need – especially with shrinking budgets and growing audit pressure.

👋 TL;DR: Offboarding isn’t just paperwork. It’s a critical, high-risk process that deserves automation love. If Bay of Plenty can turn it from bottleneck to breeze, you can too.

Need help getting started? Steal their offboarding workflow from our Process Hub or watch the Flow & Tell session where Gill walks through it here.

If you’re working in local government, there’s a good chance you’ve heard it before: 

“Only Carol knows how that works.” 

Maybe it’s Rates. Maybe it’s building consents. Maybe it’s the customer onboarding process for new dog registrations. Either way, it’s stuck in someone’s head – and everyone’s relying on them to remember. 

The real problem? Ownership. 

We’ve worked with dozens of councils across New Zealand and Australia. And one theme shows up again and again: there’s a process, but it’s invisible. 

Sometimes it’s documented in a 42-page PDF buried in SharePoint. Sometimes it’s been passed down verbally between staff for years. 

And when that happens, it’s fragile. 

When people leave, processes walk out the door with them. 
When systems change, workflows grind to a halt. 
When audits happen, teams scramble to explain how things “should” work. 

Mapping ≠ documentation. It’s delegation. 

Here’s the difference: 

• Documentation tells you what someone did once. 
• Mapping shows you how something works now – and who’s responsible for what. 

When a customer service team maps out their complaint-handling workflow, they’re not just drawing boxes.

They’re capturing the “how” behind the handoffs. They’re identifying gaps. They’re flagging pain points.

And most importantly – they’re giving their colleagues a shared, reliable reference. 

Ownership makes onboarding easier 

Process ownership isn’t just about risk reduction – it’s a huge win for onboarding too. 

Instead of asking a new starter to shadow Dave from Finance for two weeks, you can walk them through the mapped journey, complete with key responsibilities, supporting documentation, and embedded knowledge (👀 more on that coming soon). 

And when that’s paired with automation? Even better. But mapping is the first – and arguably most important step for teams struggling with process. As we love to say – automating a crap process won’t make it good, it’ll just emphasise how crap it is. 

What great ownership looks like in practice 

From fragile to futureproof 

Your goal isn’t to write the perfect SOP. It’s to make it easy for someone else to step in and succeed. 

The best time to document was yesterday. The second-best time is when your team can do it together – visually, collaboratively, and easily. 

That’s what Flowingly is built for. 

💡 Want a practical guide to protecting your council’s process knowledge?
👉 Read the Ultimate Guide to Protecting Process Knowledge → 

Process mapping is supposed to bring order to chaos. But in many councils, it ends up creating a different kind of mess – tangled diagrams, bloated documents, and confused staff asking, “Wait, where’s the actual process?” 

At Flowingly, we work with government teams across Australia and New Zealand who are tackling outdated systems, manual processes, and increasing compliance pressure. And more often than not, process mapping is where the trouble starts (and sometimes ends). 

Done well, process maps can transform how councils operate. Done poorly, they become yet another unused document sitting in SharePoint or locked in Promapp purgatory. 

So, what’s going wrong? 

Below, we unpack the most common mistakes councils make with process mapping – and how you can turn things around quickly. 

🧩 Mistake 1: Trying to Map Everything at Once 

Ambition is great. But trying to map your entire organisation in one go? That’s a one-way ticket to “overwhelmed and underdelivered.” 

It’s a mistake we see all the time. A new initiative kicks off. A process champion gets the go-ahead. Suddenly, there’s a spreadsheet with 87 processes to map “by end of quarter.” 

📚 Mistake 2: Using the Map as a Manual 

There’s a difference between a process map and an SOP. One shows the big picture. The other is the step-by-step. 

Too many councils try to cram every detail into the map: dropdown values, system screenshots, exact field names. The result? A visual nightmare. 

Keep supporting material in separate SOPs or documents – and ideally, link them. (This is exactly what Flowingly’s upcoming SOP feature will enable: rich guidance embedded within the map, but not cluttering it.) 

By separating flow from instruction, you make both easier to use – and way easier to update. 

🧠 Mistake 3: Leaving Out the People 

Process mapping isn’t just a technical task – it’s a people one. Yet, in many councils, maps are created in a vacuum. 

A BA interviews a manager, drafts the map in isolation, and sends it out for “approval.” Meanwhile, the people actually running the process haven’t been consulted at all. 

Collaboration is easier when your mapping tool is simple and accessible. That’s why Flowingly’s drag–and–drop builder is designed for everyone – not just process pros. 

🔄 Bonus Mistake: Confusing Mapping with Automation 

It’s easy to conflate mapping and automation. After all, both aim to improve processes. But jumping into automation without a clear, accurate map is like building a house without a blueprint. 

Only then should you start designing automation workflows – with a clear understanding of the real process, not a guess. 

📋 What Good Looks Like 

Let’s talk about what mapping success looks like – in the real world. 

These councils didn’t get everything perfect from day one. But they took the right first steps: mapping what matters, mapping it well, and mapping with people. 

Final Thoughts 

Mapping doesn’t need to be a 6-month project. It doesn’t need consultants. And it definitely shouldn’t be a once-and-done exercise. 

The best councils treat process mapping as a muscle – not a milestone. They map collaboratively. They map clearly. And they use those maps to drive real improvement. 

With Flowingly, you can go from mapping chaos to clarity in weeks – not months. And if you’re ready to unlock the full value of your processes, we’re here to help. 

Let’s make process improvement a team sport (and finally retire that old flowchart in the shared drive). 

Want to see what smart mapping looks like in action? 
Book a demo and we’ll show you how real councils are actually getting it done. 

Every council has that moment. 

A compliance deadline is looming. A high-risk request is floating somewhere in the ether. And someone, somewhere, is muttering the phrase that sends a chill down every governance officer’s spine: 

“Did you get my email?” 

Those six words might seem harmless. But in the world of LGOIMA, OIA, audits, and compliance requests, they can signal the beginning of a costly paper trail… or a PR nightmare. 

The High–Stakes World of Public Sector Compliance 

Local governments across New Zealand and Australia are facing a tidal wave of information requests – with LGOIMA volumes up 200%, election-season scrutiny, and ratepayer questions sharper than ever. 

The kicker? These requests often land on a single person’s desk, supported by a spreadsheet, a shared drive, and blind hope that nobody misses the deadline. 

Every missed reply, every buried document, and every misinterpreted risk level can turn into a headline. 

In short: your inbox is now a reputational risk. 
 

What’s Really Behind “Did You Get My Email?” 

That question is a symptom, not the cause. Here’s what it actually reveals: 

From Inbox to Impact: How Councils Are Changing the Game 

Councils like Ōtorohanga District have shown that the right process can turn a compliance nightmare into a well-oiled machine. What used to be a frantic juggle of emails, spreadsheets, and office walkarounds can be turned into a clearly defined, automated workflow. 

Now, when a request comes in, it’s logged, triaged, and tracked in real time. The system assigns the right people, sets clear deadlines, and even sends reminders before anything slips through the cracks.  
 
No more guesswork. No more calendar counting to hit the 20-day mark. 

Risk management? That’s built in. High-risk or media-sensitive requests are automatically flagged and escalated. And with a complete audit trail, every comment, decision, and document is captured-ready to defend if scrutiny arises. 

The best part? Teams no longer feel overwhelmed. The average turnaround time dropped to five days. Staff aren’t hiding from LGOIMAs in the corridor. And for the first time, leadership has full visibility into what’s being handled, by whom, and when. 

In short, councils are no longer just reacting. They’re in control. 

Why This Matters Now

With regulatory complexity on the rise, skill shortages across the sector, and headlines just one mistake away, local government can’t afford to run high-risk processes on low-resilience systems. 

If your compliance processes rely on memory, spreadsheets, or that one person who “knows how it works,” you’re not just at risk – you’re already behind.

So, What’s the Fix? 

It starts with recognising that inboxes aren’t workflows. That process knowledge shouldn’t walk out the door with retiring staff. And that “Did you get my email?” should never be the first sign something’s gone wrong. 

Instead, councils are turning to no-code automation platforms like Flowingly to: 

• Build transparent, step-by-step workflows in hours (not months)
• Empower frontline staff to contribute without relying solely on IT 
• Create audit-ready records – without the scramble 
• Reduce stress, risk, and operational bottlenecks 

Did Somebody Say AI? 

Councils like Ōtorohanga are already ahead of the curve with streamlined, automated LGOIMA workflows. But with AI-powered workflows in Flowingly, teams can unlock even more value – without needing to expand headcount.

1. AI-Driven Email Triage 

Instead of relying on one person to manually read and route incoming LGOIMA requests, AI can help: 

• Automatically categorise emails and route them to the right team (even when subject lines are misleading) 
• Extract key request details from the body of the email
• Flag priority or sensitive items for escalation (e.g. media-related or privacy-heavy requests).

This means governance teams can respond faster, with less manual sifting, and no risk of emails falling into inbox black holes. 

2. Sentiment & Risk Analysis at Intake

When a request is submitted through a public form or email, AI can assess: 

• The tone and sentiment of the request – helping pre-empt public relations risk
• The topics and entities mentioned (e.g. land use, budget cuts, climate resilience), tagging high-risk subjects for senior review.

For example, a request that uses neutral language but references “ratepayer privacy” or “fraud investigation” could be automatically escalated, ensuring your CE and legal team aren’t blindsided at day 19. 

3. Public Feedback & Submission Summaries

For high-profile or consultation-related requests, councils can use AI for real-time sentiment analysis to: 

• Understand public themes and opinions across similar requests, 
• Generate summary reports from free-text submissions – helping you respond faster with tailored messaging or proactive FAQs.

This isn’t theoretical. Teams are already using AI in Flowingly to enhance their processes today.

💡 Want to see these use cases in action?
Check out our webinar with Incendo – How Teams Can Transform Customer Experience Using AI. You’ll see how councils are combining Flowingly + AI to supercharge service delivery. 

Ready to Replace Chaos with Confidence? 

Whether it’s LGOIMA, internal audits, privacy requests or contractor approvals-Flowingly helps councils map, manage and automate processes that matter. 

👀 Want to see what that looks like? Check out how Flowingly can help government teams or get in touch with our team for a walkthrough. 

Because when your LGOIMA process is mapped, automated and AI-enhanced… “Did you get my email?” is no longer the most dangerous phrase in local government. 

It’s been replaced by something far worse: 
“We’re out of coffee.” 

Let’s be honest—everyone’s banging on about AI, but how many organisations are actually using it to solve real problems? 

The gap between AI hype and practical implementation is wider than most vendors want to admit. That’s why we’re cutting through the noise to share how teams are combining Flowingly with AI to create genuine improvements in both customer and employee experiences. 

In our recent webinar with Liam from Incendo, we explored use cases that aren’t theoretical “someday” implementations—they’re happening right now, delivering real value. No fancy computer science degree required. 

1. Submitting Paper Forms into Flowingly

Ever tried to convince people to stop using paper forms? It’s about as easy as getting your nan to understand Instagram Stories. 

The reality is stark: organisations spend months (sometimes years) trying to wean staff off paper, burning through budget and patience. Projects close, benefits aren’t realised, and you’re back to square one—with a stack of paper forms still sitting on the counter. 

Here’s an approach that’s actually working: 

What’s really happening behind the curtain: This AI use case works by mapping out where fields like “name,” “address,” and “phone number” typically appear on your standard forms. Unlike generic text recognition tools that can get confused by different layouts, this approach knows precisely where to look for each piece of information on your specific forms. 

The mind-blowing part? You only need to show the AI model about five examples of completed forms—some neat, some messy, some typed, some handwritten—and suddenly they’re capturing information with 98% accuracy. That means your team can stop manually entering data and start handling the parts of their job that actually require human judgment. 

The system is smart enough to know that scribble in the name field is still a name, even when someone’s messy ‘z’ looks suspiciously like a ‘2’. It pulls all this information straight into your workflow without anyone having to squint at bad handwriting or manually type things into multiple systems. 

The key insight? Change management doesn’t have to mean forcing people to abandon familiar processes—it can mean making those processes work better behind the scenes. 

2. Smart Email Triage & Responses

Many organisations face a perfect storm: improve customer experience while cutting budgets. All the while customer queries are becoming more complex, volumes have increased, and customer expectations keep getting higher and higher.

Meanwhile, teams are stretched thin, with less time to carefully consider each message. The inevitable result? Rushed, generic responses that leave customers feeling like an afterthought. Staff end up spending precious mental energy just deciding where to route messages, leaving little bandwidth for crafting thoughtful, personalised replies.

Here’s an approach that’s actually working: 

What’s really happening behind the curtain: This isn’t just glorified keyword searching that sees “dog” in a subject line and mindlessly routes it to animal control. We’ve all experienced that kind of “smart” system, and it’s about as smart as a goldfish with amnesia.

Instead, it’s using natural language processing to actually understand the content and intent of messages. In the demo, someone deliberately tried to trick the system with a misleading subject line about dogs, but the content was clearly about litter in parks. The system analysed the full message context, ignored the red herring in the subject line, and correctly routed it to the parks team.

The AI reads through the entire message, identifies the main topics being discussed, and makes intelligent decisions about categorisation. It also extracts the key points that need addressing, ensuring nothing gets missed in lengthy emails.

The game-changer? Everyone from the brand-new temp to your most experienced staff can now focus on giving great answers instead of playing email detective. The system suggests where messages should go and offers response ideas, but humans still bring the judgment, empathy, and decision-making that no AI can match.

It’s not just pulling canned responses either. The system actually crafts suggestions based on what the person is specifically asking about—capturing your organisation’s voice while addressing the particular points raised. No more copy-pasting the same generic template and hoping it sort of fits.

This approach means consistent customer service without the staffing overheads—and without the risk of points being missed in busy inboxes.

The key insight? You don’t need to hire more people to improve service quality—you need to give your existing team tools that eliminate the low-value work so they can focus on what matters: the human connection.

3. ID Document Processing

Let’s face it—manually checking IDs and inputting data is about as exciting as watching paint dry. It’s also a breeding ground for errors that can have serious consequences.

Think about how many places you handle identification documents: new employee onboarding, customer verification, contractor certifications. When humans manually process these, mistakes happen—dates get mistyped, documents get misfiled, and suddenly someone’s been driving company vehicles with an expired licence for two years.

Here’s an approach that’s actually working: 

What’s really happening behind the curtain: Unlike the paper form solution that needs training on your specific documents, this implementation leverages pre-built AI models that already understand identification documents from around the world. 

The system uses computer vision technology that’s been trained on thousands of different ID types—passports, driver’s licenses, national ID cards—from dozens of countries. It knows where to find key information on each document type, regardless of the format. 

What makes this particularly clever is that it doesn’t just capture text—it understands document structure. It knows the difference between an issue date and expiry date. It recognises when a string of characters is a license number versus an address. And it does this even with imperfect images that have glare, weird angles, or poor lighting. 

When verification from third parties (like police) is needed, Flowingly’s external actor feature can give those outside your organisation a secure way to contribute to the workflow without the usual email ping-pong. 

Instead of monitoring mailboxes and manually attaching returned documents, external parties simply click a link that pulls them directly into the workflow, where they can submit their verification. The workflow continues automatically once they’ve contributed. 

The result? A process that’s faster, more accurate, and creates a proper audit trail without anyone having to manually save documents or remember naming conventions. 

The key insight? The most expensive mistakes are often the most mundane ones—a mistyped date, a misfiled document, a missed verification. Letting AI handle these details isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about reducing significant organisational risk.

4. Sentiment Analysis That Actually Tells You Something Useful

We’ve all been there—staring at pages of survey responses or feedback submissions trying to make sense of what people are actually saying. By the time you’ve made sense of it all, it’s usually too late to do anything meaningful with the insights.

That’s where the fourth use case comes in: real-time sentiment analysis and theme extraction from public submissions, surveys, or feedback.

Every organisation has talented people stuck wading through mountains of feedback—whether it’s council submissions, customer surveys, or internal staff sentiment. These folks could be identifying critical insights and taking action, but instead they’re drowning in a process that’s typically slow, subjective, and backward-looking.

Here’s an approach that’s actually working: 

What’s really happening behind the curtain:

This implementation uses multiple AI technologies working together to make sense of qualitative feedback—the kind of free-text responses that traditionally require hours of human analysis.

The system uses sentiment analysis algorithms to determine the emotional tone behind submissions. But it goes beyond simple positive/negative classification—it can detect nuances like “concerned but supportive” or “strongly opposed on specific grounds,” giving you a much more nuanced understanding of public opinion.

The AI doesn’t just look at individual submissions in isolation. It analyses patterns across all responses, using natural language processing to identify recurring themes and topics. This is not simple keyword counting—it’s understanding concepts even when people express similar concerns using completely different words.

What’s particularly clever is how it condenses complex feedback into actionable insights. The system automatically generates thematic summaries—short phrases that capture the essence of what people are saying about specific aspects of your proposal. This transforms pages of feedback into digestible insights that decision-makers can actually use.

The kicker? This happens in real-time, not weeks after your consultation period ends. Most survey results or submission analyses are produced after everything’s finished—when it’s too late to adjust your approach or messaging. With live insights, you can course-correct while your consultation is still active, ensuring you get more representative feedback.

The key insight? The true value of feedback isn’t in collecting it—it’s in how quickly you can understand and act on it. Real-time analysis transforms feedback from a retrospective exercise into an active guidance system for decision-making.

These four examples show how organizations are using AI today – not in some distant future. The key is using AI to handle repetitive tasks while keeping humans in control of decisions and customer relationships.

The most successful implementations:

• Free people from data entry to focus on customer service
• Improve consistency while preserving human judgment
• Automate document handling to reduce costly mistakes
• Turn feedback into actionable insights in real-time

Want to see these solutions in action? Watch our webinar with Incendo where we demonstrate exactly how these use cases work and how they’re built. Or get in touch for a demonstration of how Flowingly and AI can transform your processes without the usual implementation headaches.