Summer Series: Local Government Challenges and Lessons Learnt in Smart Communities, with Martin Darcy

Hi #smartcommunity friends! Welcome to the Summer Series here on the Smart Community Podcast. We’re taking a little break from new content over the Australian summer holidays, and instead we are sharing the replays of a few of our all time favourite episodes. This week to kick off the series, we’re sharing my interview with Martin Darcy, who was on the show back in July 2022 in Episode 303.

Martin is the Service Manager of Business and Innovation with Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council. In this episode, Martin starts off by telling us about his background in the tourism industry, his past roles and current role working in local government, and Martin tells us what a Smart Community means to him. Martin then tells us a bit about how his role at the Council has evolved over time, some of the challenges in the Smart Communities space he has faced in this time, before he discusses his experience working to embed Smart Communities in his organisation. He then shares with us some lessons learnt when measuring and monitoring Smart Community benefits, as well as some of the communication and community engagement challenges he has faced. 

We then discuss the importance of educating the community about the benefits of Smart Communities and some of the elements that contribute to dealing with change. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trends of using data to make better informed decisions. There’s a few audio glitches in this interview but it’s a great conversation so we hope you will forgive us the imperfections. As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!

Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community 

Connect with Martin via LinkedIn 

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community  

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital