How Ōtorohanga District Council turned LGOIMA from a dreaded task into a streamlined workflow – in six weeks

The Challenge

Before Flowingly, LGOIMA requests at Ōtorohanga were managed through a combination of email, spreadsheets, and in-person follow-ups. Requests would come in through reception, get emailed to Jess, and sometimes she wouldn’t even get the notification.

From there, it was a manual effort to decipher each request, figure out who needed to provide information, and chase responses across the building.Requests were tracked in spreadsheets and coordinated through email threads, with staff responsible for following up across departments to gather information and track progress.

“It would always be in a different email and not the same thread. People would be like, ‘oh, I’ve sent you that information.’ I’m like, no, you haven’t.”
— Jessica Nelson, Information Management Officer, Ōtorohanga District Council

The council was struggling to meet the statutory 20-working-day timeframe. There was no clear process for risk assessment – Jess was making judgement calls herself on what needed to be escalated to the CE, without guidance built into the process. Staff across the organisation saw LGOIMA as something to avoid.

“One of our activity managers said, ‘I can face LGOIMA now. I’m not scared of it anymore.’ It took the fear factor out.”
— Rebecca Griffin, Business Improvement Lead, Ōtorohanga District Council

Transparency was the number one problem. There was no way to see where a request was at, who had actioned what, or whether deadlines were at risk. And with LGOIMA volumes increasing fourfold in the past year – driven by local elections, amalgamation questions, and government expenditure scrutiny, doing nothing wasn’t an option.

The Solution

Rebecca and Jess chose LGOIMA as one of their first Flowingly workflows – not because it was simple, but because it was the biggest pain point for leadership, for the CE, and for Jess personally.

The build took about six weeks from start to finish. Three weeks were spent mapping and rethinking the process itself — pen and paper, sitting down with the team, unpacking how it should work. The actual build in Flowingly was, in Rebecca’s words, “a matter of hours.” Another three weeks of testing, and they were live.

“The fact that LGOIMA was the one we decided on straight off the bat shows how user-friendly it is to build something. Because our process – it’s not simple. There’s a lot to it.”
— Jessica Nelson, Information Management Officer

The workflow now handles the full lifecycle. Requests come in through a public-facing Flowingly form on the council’s website. The requester gets an automatic acknowledgement email within a minute. From there, the workflow guides Jess through risk assessment – with built-in logic for low, medium, and high risk. It then routes to the right people, collecting information through comment fields and file attachments, and managing peer review and CE escalation when needed.

Staff don’t have to write formal responses. They just add their information in the comments, attach any documents, and move on. Jess handles the drafting, Rebecca reviews, and the workflow ensures nothing gets skipped or lost.

“When they need it, an email comes straight to their inbox. They click on it, it goes to the comment section, they put in the information, send it to me, and that’s them done.”
— Jessica Nelson, Information Management Officer

Results

In the first seven months, the council processed 52 LGOIMA requests through the workflow. The average completion time is now five working days – well inside the 20-day statutory requirement that the team had previously struggled to meet.

Risk has dropped significantly. The built-in risk model means decisions are guided by logic rather than guesswork, and the audit trail gives leadership full visibility without having to get involved in every request.

“Leadership now have faith and trust in the process. They’ve gone hands off – not because they don’t care, but because they can see it. The transparency is just fantastic.”
— Rebecca Griffin, Business Improvement Lead, Ōtorohanga District Council

The error rate is “way, way lower” than before, and the workflow has been through 63 iterations – a testament to the team’s approach to continuous improvement. They launched something good, got it into people’s hands, and refined it based on what they learned.

Just do it. The version we have now is most definitely not the version we started with. You can’t think ahead of every eventuality. It’s never gonna be perfect right off the bat.”
— Rebecca Griffin, Business Improvement Lead, Ōtorohanga District Council

Beyond LGOIMA, the team has gone live with workflows for trading in public places, new water connections, supplier applications, risk reporting, and leadership team agenda management – all built through workflows rather than static process maps.