Timaru District Council’s Chief Information Officer has been selected be co-president of a prestigious national body.

Justin Bagust has been selected alongside Western Bay of Plenty CIO Marion Dowd as co-presidents of the Association of Local Government Information Management, the national body representing the IT, web, records management, customer services and geographic information sectors of Local Government.

Justin, who has been CIO at Timaru District Council for 10 years welcomed the news, underlining the importance of technology in everything that councils do.

“I’m very excited to be working alongside Marion as Co-President, I think our diverse skill sets will complement each other nicely,” he said.

“Having worked with Marion on the board of ALGIM for eight years already, I have a lot of trust and a great working relationship with her. I think together we will be able to carry on former president Billy Michel’s legacy to continue to lead ALGIM into the changeable and paradigm shifting future ahead of us.

“Local government relies on technology for much of what it does whether that’s ensuring quality mapping for planning and infrastructure processes to enabling a whole new range of ways for our community to use our services through digital channels.

“Through ALGIM we have a forum where we can share best practice, ideas, collaborate and celebrate successes with each other, to better deliver quality and cost-effective solutions for our communities.

“At its best, local government can be incredibly agile, responsive and innovative and my hope is in this role I can work to further foster this innovation across the sector.”

For more information about ALGIM visit www.algim.org.nz