Connected Councils Start With Connected Communities

Benji Crooks, Marketing Director at Public Sector Network, spoke with John Baker, Chief Executive Officer at Sunshine Coast Council, about what connected councils mean in practice, where AI and data can improve local government service delivery, and why public trust must sit at the centre of digital transformation. John will speak at Local Government Focus Day Queensland as part of Government Innovation Week Queensland on Thursday, 08 October 2026, in the panel “Connected Councils: Building the Digital Foundations for Growth, Innovation and Brisbane 2032.”

Benji Crooks: Okay, great. Could you introduce yourself, your role and the company you work for?

John Baker: Hi Benji. I’m John Baker, Chief Executive Officer of Sunshine Coast Council up here in Queensland. We’re the fifth-largest council in Australia.

Benji Crooks: With your council in mind, what does connected councils mean in practice across platforms, data, people and regional collaboration?

John Baker: In its broadest sense, when we look at connectedness, it isn’t simply about transport networks and making sure people can get around. That, of course, is a huge aspect of how we connect our communities and make sure they’re able to engage with each other. So there is an element of connectedness around infrastructure projects.

But a large part of the work we’re doing at the moment is around community engagement and connecting communities in a different way, and indeed connecting us with them. It’s about reaching groups that aren’t necessarily the usual suspects in terms of how you go about engaging with them, and engaging with people in a different way. That’s a big part of connectedness for us as well.

Then, of course, there is the technology aspect to connectedness. Sunshine Coast is one of only three areas in the whole of Australia that have subsea cables coming in. We have two. There are only actually four cables in the whole of Australia, and we have two of them coming into Maroochydore, which means we’ve got the likes of NEXTDC building data centres, we’ve got Google here, and we’ve got a lot of aeronautical tech firms that use that accessibility.

So connectedness is also part of how we connect business and how we connect to the technology framework.

Another aspect of connectedness is making sure we’re able to deliver for our community what’s important. They tell us that they want to hold onto what is valuable to them on the Sunshine Coast. I hear, “We don’t want to be a large, built-up city. We want to hold onto what it is that we love about the place.”

A large part of that is about how those communities connect with each other; how what is really 42 towns across the Sunshine Coast connect with each other culturally, as well as in the transport sense. So connectedness, to me, is all of those things. It’s a very broad definition.

Benji Crooks: Absolutely. Where do you see the biggest opportunities for councils when they’re using shared platforms or integrated data to improve service delivery and operational efficiency?

John Baker: The data is incredibly useful. First of all, I would contend that councils have rarely been short of data. In fact, we’re swimming in data.

The really interesting part of what we’ve got now is analysis, and quick analysis. With the use of AI and a variety of different tools, we’re now able to use data in a very different way to inform what we are doing than we’ve ever been able to in the past.

So I think that’s a huge part of it. It’s not just having the data; it’s how we use it to inform how we engage with our communities and the conversations we need to have. It’s how we connect infrastructure projects in a way that our community wants, and how we address climate change in a proactive way because we now have this data. That’s really important.

Benji Crooks: You just brought up AI. Where do you see the most practical use cases for councils across planning, customer experience and asset management?

John Baker: I put it in two camps. There is the AI at the moment that we’re all reading about, and we’ve been an early adopter of a number of aspects of that.

We are using planning tools associated with assessing planning applications, and that’s proving incredibly useful both for our community — people applying for development applications — as well as for the planning team. That’s really useful.

Another instance could be everything from how we coordinate traffic lights, to how we assess our services. We’ve got a couple of projects at the moment using AI, looking at how we can become a digital city on the Sunshine Coast. There are lots of applications we can use, from refuse collection right through to planning.

But running parallel with that, the thing I think we’re hearing less about, and which I’m very keen to make sure we embrace, is what used to be very time-consuming, extensive and expensive work looking at our processes, and how we’ve configured our services.

The analysis used to be very costly. We would get teams of consultants, or internal teams, looking at some of this stuff. Now, provided we’ve got our as-is process reasonably clear, we can use AI to look at how that can be done more effectively, particularly from the principle of putting the community right at the very heart of that process.

I’m very excited about that aspect as well, because on one side, with service delivery, I think we improve quality. On the other side, I think we’re going to be able to deliver significant financial gains for our ratepayers.

Benji Crooks: With all this data connectivity and data-driven work, how do you approach cyber resilience and public trust?

John Baker: That’s a hugely important aspect. Cyber resilience, and what we do with people’s personal information, is a massive issue for us.

At the moment, obviously, we adhere to a lot of the rules. It’s a highly regulated environment, and of course we adhere to all of the rules around it. But going deeper than that, there is a point at which I could, in theory — as most local authorities could — build up a very complete and complex model of what an individual wants, just from the multitude of different interactions they have with us, from cradle to grave, pretty much, as far as council is concerned.

I think there is a moral imperative there to actually make sure we have permission to do that.

From my perspective, it’s not only making sure that we capitalise on our ability to do that in order to add value, and that people are known to us and we’re able to provide them with the services they need, but it is also making sure we have permission.

So it isn’t just about protecting the data, in the sense of having that firewall around all of the information that we hold and guard jealously on behalf of our community. It’s also making sure that we capitalise on it, but with permission. I think that is the other bit about the integrity of the data.

Benji Crooks: You’ll be speaking at our Local Government Focus Day on the 8th of October. What is one thing you’re hoping people who come to see your session will take away from it?

John Baker: I hope people will hear about some of the really interesting stuff that we are doing. We’ve done some really innovative work around this.

But I’m particularly interested in making sure people have that broader understanding of what connectedness means, and what technology and AI can actually bring to that aspect of it.

I’m particularly interested in how that underpins community engagement, how that informs community engagement, and as a consequence, informs the services that we provide quickly. I hope people hear about good mechanisms for doing that.

I’ve got a long career, and I spent many years in the UK delivering services in local authorities. I learnt a lot there. Local authorities like Wigan, Kensington and Chelsea, and Edinburgh, where I worked, did a lot on connectedness.

I’m really keen to give people examples of what I think we can achieve here, because it’s hugely important. I don’t think people have ever felt as isolated as they feel right now. People don’t know their neighbours anymore. We have so many opportunities to connect, and we need to be able to take them.

I do believe there are some good opportunities for councils to set up an environment that allows us to do that.

Hear John Baker at Local Government Focus Day Queensland as part of Government Innovation Week Queensland on Thursday, 08 October 2026. His panel will explore how connected councils can use shared platforms, integrated data, regional collaboration, AI and resilient digital infrastructure to improve services and prepare for Brisbane 2032.