Local Government
Independent ICT advice for the technology decisions your council cannot get wrong.
Councils are judged on ICT governance, cyber risk and how procurement decisions were made. We develop the plans, frameworks and tender documents that give your CEO, elected members and auditors confidence those decisions were made properly.
- WALGA Preferred Supplier
- Working with WA councils since 2019
- Over 25 years in ICT
FROM THE FOUNDER
We have worked with WA councils since 2019.
- OAG audit preparation and response
- ICT governance frameworks that hold up to scrutiny
- Business continuity and disaster recovery planning
- Structured ERP and ICT vendor selection
- Free ICT governance workshops across regional WA
You know your council needs independent advice when...
The same findings appear in your audit reports year after year.
You have no current ICT plan your elected members have endorsed.
Your ICT policies were written years ago and no longer describe how the council operates.
Staff are using AI tools and no policy covers what they can put into them.
An ERP replacement is coming and nobody has documented how the council works now.
The PRIS Act commenced on 1 July 2026 and nobody at the council owns it.
Your BCDR plan has not been tested since the day it was written.
Every vendor you speak to recommends their own product regardless of your situation.
Most of this starts to surface in the first conversation. An ICT Health Check is usually the fastest way to see the full picture.
What We Do
What Cohesis does for local government.
Cohesis provides independent local government ICT consulting to metropolitan and regional councils across Western Australia.
We assess ICT environments, write ICT plans and digital strategies, develop governance frameworks and policy suites, and run ERP, vendor and MSP selection processes including market analysis, RFTs and RFQs.
We are a WALGA Preferred Supplier, so councils can engage us directly without going to open tender, subject to their own procurement policies.
Independent assessments
Know where your council stands before the auditors ask.
ICT Health Check
A structured review of your whole ICT environment. What is working, where risk is accumulating, and what to address first. Most councils start here, either ahead of an OAG audit or to establish a baseline before committing to an ICT plan.
Essential Eight Assessment
Every control scored against the ACSC's four maturity levels. Control-by-control findings rather than one aggregated score that hides the gaps, then a remediation roadmap ranked by risk and effort.
PRIS Readiness Assessment
The Privacy and Responsible Information Sharing Act commenced on 1 July 2026, and local governments are public entities under it. We assess whether the governance, controls and named roles the Act sets out are in place, and what needs work before serious data breach reporting begins on 1 January 2027.
AI Readiness Assessment
Your staff are already using AI tools, whether or not the council has approved it. We work with your team to establish which tools are in use, what council information is going into them, and whether policy and controls cover any of it. Then we set out what a governed rollout inside Microsoft 365 would take.
Strategy and planning
A council ICT strategy your elected members can get behind.
3 to 5 year ICT plan
A costed, sequenced ICT plan aligned to your corporate business plan and budget cycle. Priorities ranked by risk and deliverability, so your leadership team can defend the sequence to elected members and auditors can see the reasoning behind each decision.
Digital strategy development
We have written digital strategies for the City of Canning, the City of Perth and the City of Bayswater. Each one built around that council's services, workforce and community obligations. Digital and ICT risks are identified inside the strategy rather than bolted on afterwards, and every recommendation carries a practical next step rather than an aspiration.
Procurement decisions your council can defend to anyone who asks.
An ERP replacement is the largest technology decision most councils make in a decade, and the part that goes wrong is rarely the software. It is the requirements nobody documented, the market nobody surveyed, and the scoring criteria written after the vendors had already presented. We run the process in order, and every stage produces a document your council owns.
Business process mapping
How your council works now, documented before anyone writes a requirement. Workflows are mapped across finance, rates, records, planning and customer service, then analysed for where duplication and manual handling sit. Councils often buy this on its own, because it is also the evidence base for everything that follows.
ERP vendor market analysis
An independent view of the ERP market for local government before you commit to a tender. Which systems are genuinely used by councils your size, what each one does well, and where the practical limitations sit. Knowing this early changes what you ask for.
RFT & RFQ documentation
Tender documentation that gives vendors what they need to price accurately and gives your council a scored, defensible outcome. Requirements, evaluation criteria and weightings are agreed before responses arrive, not after.
ERP selection
Vendor responses assessed against criteria your council set. Structured demonstrations, reference checks, commercial terms interpreted in plain language, and a documented recommendation your CEO can take to council.
Vendor & MSP selection
Independent review of your current support arrangements against SLAs, ticket resolution, regional site coverage and user satisfaction. Then a recommendation on the right support model for your council's size and risk profile. We are not a managed service provider, so we are never reviewing a competitor.
Project management
Independent project management that keeps delivery accountable to the council rather than the vendor. Scope, risks and issues reported to your leadership throughout, and we represent the council's interests from requirements through to go-live sign-off.
Six shires, one ERP selection process
We led the Shires of Williams, West Arthur, Carnamah, Cuballing, Kojonup and Dumbleyung through a collaborative ERP selection. We worked with each shire individually and then all six collectively to gather requirements, agree scoring criteria and build an RFT that let vendors price for the consortium.
Evaluated systems included Magiq, CouncilFirst, Readytech and Datascape.
Governance
Governance frameworks that hold up when the OAG wants evidence.
ICT governance framework
Current state established through interviews with your leadership team and ICT staff, then a framework setting out decision rights, escalation paths and review cycles. Policies aligned to the Essential Eight, LGIS guidance and OAG expectations, with a named owner against each one.
Policy suite development
The full suite developed as connected documents rather than seven separate files. Asset management, risk management, cyber, backup, data classification and privacy, each with accountability written in and a review date your council can actually meet.
Business continuity & disaster recovery planning
The Local Government Act 1995 requires councils to document, test and update disaster recovery arrangements. We build BCDR plans around your actual systems, services and community obligations, then guide your team through the testing cycle so the plan stays current as systems and staffing change.
Microsoft 365 apps
Microsoft 365 apps built for the way councils work.
Two of our apps are built specifically for local government operations. Both run inside your council's existing Microsoft 365 environment, so there is no new infrastructure, no separate logins and no third-party hosting. These are Cohesis products, built by our Agendis team. They are the only systems on this page we license ourselves, and we will always tell you so.
AgendisRISK
A live risk register, compliance assessments, incident tracking and reporting your team can take to council, all inside the environment your staff already use. The Essential Eight framework is built in as standard, so your council can run its own self-assessment at any time and track remediation without waiting for an external review.
Point it at any document where risks, actions and decisions are buried. An OAG audit report, an internal review, a consultant’s findings, minutes from an executive meeting, a workshop transcript. AgendisRISK extracts them as tracked items with owners and due dates, so the things your council has already identified stop sitting in documents nobody reopens.
That includes assessments we deliver, which load straight in. It works exactly the same way with reports from anyone else.
21-day implementation guarantee.
We will have your environment live and your team using it within 21 days of receiving your Microsoft 365 credentials, or we extend your first year at no additional charge.
25+ WA councils & Shires, from the CBD to the regions
Metropolitan and regional local governments across Western Australia, served since 2019.
Why Cohesis
We have vendor relationships. We do not have vendor-influenced advice.
We take no commissions & no referral fees
No third-party system we recommend pays us anything. We are not a managed service provider either, so when we review your MSP we are not reviewing a competitor. We do license our own Microsoft 365 apps, including AgendisRISK, and we will always tell you so. What we never do is put our own product into a selection process as though it were the neutral outcome of a comparison.
We know what the OAG looks for
Local government is most of what we do. OAG expectations, obligations under the Local Government Act 1995, the PRIS Act, Essential Eight maturity and LGIS guidance. We know which findings recur across councils and why.
We report what we find
Assessments are evidence-based and the findings go in the report whether they are convenient or not. Sometimes the recommendation is that a council should not change anything yet.
