Jane Nees BOP Regional Councillor www.janenees.co.nz

In times of change and when resources are short, innovation is the key to success.

At the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, staff are being encouraged to think innovatively to find cost effective solutions in their work.

The regional council established a Bright Ideas Innovation Fund in August 2010 to encourage innovative thinking and actions by staff at the council.

The fund's focus is to improve the value and outcomes of regional council's work for the benefit of the Bay of Plenty community.

The regional council recently received a report on the bright ideas which were identified by staff in 2010 and selected for funding to investigate their further potential.

The results of the innovation funding were exciting. The most exciting for me were:

• The potential development of land based aquaculture using dairy farm effluent as a feed-source.
• A cost-effective supplemental wastewater treatment system, which can be retrofitted to an existing septic tank to replace the need to upgrade to a whole new advanced system.
• The development of a smart-phone application to provide bus timetable data directly to users on their cell-phones; and
• An automated system to efficiently coordinate staff and document transport, enabling more effective and efficient use of the council car-fleet.

Some of these ideas are already being implemented, while others are undergoing further development and trials.

I look forward to seeing the future results of this innovative thinking.

In addition, an innovation funding round will be run again in 2011, and it will be great to hear of other innovations which will improve the way things are done.

As Bill Gates said: 'Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time” – and he should know.

If you have any views on this or any other issue, please contact me on neesj@xtra.co.nz or ring me on 07 579-5150. Or you can check out my website at www.janenees.co.nz