Online council deals back on the table

Bang the Table, the company which lost the business of NSW Transport for inadvertently enabling the leaking of government documents, has announced today that it has signed five new contracts with councils.

Bang the Table specialises in providing systems to run forums and blogs for "online engagement", or seeking the opinion of those in the community about certain issues.

It was from such a forum that media outlets had managed to download an unreleased NSW government transport blueprint. The company had password protected the front page of the site, but that didn't stop people from accessing the remainder of the content.

However, the company appears to have turned things around. Auburn City Council, Bankstown City Council, Blue Mountains City Council, Yarra Ranges Shire Council and the City of Yarra have all signed on for systems to help them run community engagement projects.

Bang the Table said it is now supplying 30 local councils around Australia with its products, with director Matthew Crozier saying governments were increasingly turning towards online solutions for gauging public opinion.

"We've seen huge growth in our local government client base. Increasingly, local councils are seeing that not only do online engagement tools have the power to reach a vast number of people quickly but they are also cost effective to deploy.

"Councils are at the coalface of delivering local services and so are highly effective in allowing the community to have input into decision making around subjects like rate rises, community planning, cycling strategies and planning issues and other community initiatives."