Sustaining our community infrastructure and assets is potentially the greatest challenge faced by Local Governments across Australia. At risk is the continued sustainability of assets which support the delivery of many of our community services. Most states have identified a substantial emerging gap in Local Government’s capacity to renew it assets. We suggest the problem is broader than the conventional asset management activities and fundamentally requires that we have informed debate at both the national and local levels. In order to have such an informed debate we need access to reliable, consistent and relevant information. However, experience has shown that trying to obtain this information is difficult. In most cases it does not exist and where it does exist it is frequently inadequate. This paper
outlines a project that is currently in progress that aims to develop a national framework for the exchange of community asset information. As a result we hope to be able to inform the debate that must occur if we are to solve the issue of the renewal gap for community assets. Click here to read more
