30 June is closer than it feels. For council digital, IT and communications teams, the weeks between now and end of financial year are often the most useful window in the calendar for getting digital projects approved, scoped and committed. Budget that hasn't been allocated has a way of disappearing.
This checklist covers what to review before 30 June, what can realistically be committed in that window, and what to put in front of your GM or director to get a project across the line before the financial year closes.
The most common EOFY mistake councils make is waiting too long to start the internal conversation. Getting approval in principle before 30 June is more achievable than it looks, even when the full project runs into the new financial year.
Why does 30 June matter for council digital projects?
Australian councils operate on a July to June financial year. Unspent or uncommitted capital and operational budget in some expense categories doesn't automatically roll over. For digital teams, this creates a window where a project that has been sitting in the "next year" column can actually get approved and committed against the current year's allocation, provided the conversation starts early enough.
The timing also aligns with natural review cycles. Many councils assess their digital infrastructure and vendor contracts in Q3 and Q4 of the financial year. IT managers are reviewing licence renewals. Digital managers are looking at what didn't get done. Communications teams are asking whether the intranet is actually reaching people. These conversations are already happening internally. EOFY gives them a reason to reach a decision rather than a deferral.
It's also worth noting that a signed contract or scoped project before 30 June often satisfies budget commitment requirements, even if implementation runs through Q1 or Q2 of the new financial year. You do not need to have a new website live by June 30. You need to have decided.
What can a council realistically commit before 30 June?
This is the honest answer most digital vendors won't give you. Here's what's actually achievable in the next few weeks.
| Project type |
Commitment before 30 June |
Go-live expectation |
| New council website |
Yes: scope, quote and contract |
Q3–Q4 new FY (3–6 months from kickoff) |
| New council intranet |
Yes: scope, quote and contract |
Q2–Q3 new FY (6–12 weeks from kickoff) |
| Add multi-site to existing platform |
Yes |
Possible before 30 June if started immediately |
| Website or intranet upgrade |
Yes |
Q2 new FY depending on scope |
| Platform consolidation (multi-site) |
Yes: scope and contract |
Q3–Q4 new FY |
| Intranet for frontline workers |
Yes |
Q2 new FY (6 to 12 weeks from kickoff) |
Timelines are indicative and depend on council size, scope and content readiness. Confirm specifics with your vendor.
The practical goal for most councils between now and June 30 is: identify the project, get internal sign-off, and have a vendor conversation that results in a scoped proposal and a contract. That sequence is achievable in two to three weeks for most organisations.
What should a council website review cover before EOFY?
A website review doesn't need to be a formal project. Five focused questions will tell you whether your current site is doing the job it needs to do and whether EOFY is the right moment to commit to a change.
Council website EOFY review checklist
- What are your top 10 most-visited pages? Are they the 10 most important resident services, or are they news and announcements residents didn't go looking for?
- What is your mobile traffic share? For most councils it sits between 55 and 65 per cent. Does your website actually work well on a phone?
- What are residents searching for that the site can't surface? Pull your internal search data and contact centre inbound topics for the last six months.
- When did your current CMS last receive a security or feature update? Is the vendor still actively supporting the platform?
- Has your site been audited for accessibility? Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, councils have obligations to make services accessible. Known compliance gaps are a risk that accumulates over time.
- Does your current platform support multi-site management? If your council runs separate sites for facilities, tourism or libraries, are they on the same system or creating separate overhead?
Only 55 per cent of Australians engage with local government online, compared to 80 per cent for state and 88 per cent for federal government, according to the TechnologyOne and IBRS Digital Citizens Report 2025. For councils where the website is the primary community touchpoint, that gap is a service delivery problem, not just a digital one. A modern council website CMS built around resident tasks rather than internal departmental logic closes it.
Dubbo Regional Council used EOFY planning to scope a consolidation that brought their main website, two multi-sites and two sub-sites onto a single Elcom platform. The result was one administration environment, one upgrade cycle and no additional licensing per site. Inner West Council followed a similar path after the 2016 amalgamation, consolidating three separate websites from the former Ashfield, Leichhardt and Marrickville councils into a single managed environment.
What should a council intranet review cover before EOFY?
The intranet review question most councils skip is also the most important one: who actually has access? Many councils assume staff engagement is low because of content or design. The real answer is often simpler. A large portion of the workforce, rangers, depot workers, library staff, community centre teams, was never set up with access in the first place.
Council intranet EOFY review checklist
- What percentage of your total headcount is logging into the intranet each month? Pull this against your full staff list, not just office-based employees.
- Do your frontline and outdoor staff have a corporate email address or Microsoft 365 licence? If not, they likely have no intranet access at all.
- How are compliance updates, safety alerts and mandatory policy changes currently reaching staff who don't have intranet access?
- What is your current per-user licensing cost? If your intranet charges per seat, extending access to casual and frontline staff may be pushing the budget case into unfeasible territory.
- How long does onboarding take for new staff who can't access the intranet from day one? At an average council turnover rate of 18 per cent (LGNSW HR Metrics 2022-23), that process is running constantly.
- Is your intranet mobile-optimised? For staff without a fixed workstation, mobile access isn't an optional feature. It's the only channel that works.
GJK Facility Services used Elcom's intranet platform to give 2,500-plus field staff their first single source of truth and mobile self-service access, without requiring corporate email addresses for any of them. Northcott, a large NSW disability services organisation with 160 locations, deployed the same platform so frontline staff across a rapidly growing workforce could find critical information fast, regardless of where they were working.
For councils considering an intranet for the first time or replacing a legacy system, Elcom's intranet evaluation guide includes a vendor comparison template and the specific questions worth asking before committing to a platform. The intranet packages page covers what's included at each implementation tier.
How do you build a quick business case for a digital project at EOFY?
Council digital projects typically need sign-off from a General Manager, Director or steering committee. The business case doesn't need to be a lengthy document to be effective at EOFY. Executives making budget decisions in the final weeks of the financial year need a short, clear answer to three questions.
What is the problem this project solves? Frame it in operational terms, not technology terms. Not "we need a new CMS" but "our website is not converting resident enquiries to self-service, which is increasing call centre volume and slowing down our customer service team." Not "we need an intranet" but "30 to 50 per cent of our workforce has no access to council communications or policy updates, which creates a compliance gap and slows onboarding."
What will it cost and what is the realistic return? For a council website, Elcom's platform starts at $30,000 and scales with scope. For a mid-sized council where the website serves as the primary resident service channel, the return is measured in call deflection, compliance risk reduction and community engagement. For an intranet, the return shows up in onboarding time, compliance coverage and staff retention. Councils with 400-plus staff turning over at 18 per cent annually are running a constant onboarding operation. A streamlined digital onboarding experience reduces the cost of that cycle.
What is the timeline and what happens next? Executives need to know the project is manageable. A council intranet typically runs six to twelve weeks from kickoff to go-live. A council website redesign runs three to six months. Committing budget before June 30 and kicking off in July puts a new intranet live by Q2 and a new website live by Q3 or Q4 of the new financial year.
What does an Elcom council implementation actually look like?
Elcom's implementation model for councils is in-house from start to finish. Project managers, designers, developers and trainers are all based in Australia. There is no offshore delivery and no agency handoff. For a council IT or digital manager managing an implementation alongside their regular workload, that means one point of contact throughout the project and same-timezone support when questions come up.
The Elcom digital experience platform runs website, intranet and council portal from a single codebase. That means a council scoping a website project this EOFY is not closing off the option of adding an intranet or community portal later on the same platform. Councils that start with the website and later bring the intranet onto the same system avoid running separate platforms and separate vendor relationships indefinitely.
Pre-built integrations with Microsoft 365, SharePoint and TechnologyOne mean the platform connects with the systems councils are already running. There are no per-user licensing surprises. The model is an annual platform fee that covers the full workforce, regardless of headcount or how many staff are casual, outdoor or without corporate email.
The government solutions page covers how Elcom works in a local government context, including case studies from councils across Australia. Elcom's CMS buyers guide and website redesign guide are both practical starting points if you're trying to define scope before a vendor conversation.
What should councils actually do before 30 June?
Three things, in this order. Run the review checklists above to confirm where your biggest gaps sit. Have an internal conversation with your GM, Director or whoever holds budget authority, using the business case framing in this article. Then have a scoping conversation with a vendor to understand what's realistic in your timeframe.
A scoping conversation is not a commitment. It gives you a realistic proposal to put in front of leadership and a clear answer to "what can we actually do with this budget before June 30." For most councils, that conversation takes less than an hour. If you want to start that conversation with Elcom, the team is available for a no-obligation 20-minute call. No sales pitch, just an honest assessment of what's achievable in your window.
The Dubbo team report an improved ease of use in managing multiple sites on a central and user-friendly platform, which utilises a shared database of documents and images. The sites also enjoy the same functionality as the main Council site, such as drag and drop online form creator and automated workflows.
Dubbo Regional Council
Read the case study