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Local government

Public space, CCTV, and the networks between sites

A council is asked to keep public space safe, maintained and worth investing in. It usually has to do that with the cameras, sensors and networks it already owns, and a budget that has to be argued for line by line. Ericom works with what is already in the ground, turns what it sees into evidence a council can act on and defend, and stays to run it. The suite is called Civic Transform.

Three problems

A council usually comes to us carrying one of three things: a camera estate no register accounts for, a funding case that cannot be evidenced, or an incident that exposed how long it takes to get the right footage to the right people.

  • The cameras are there. Nobody knows how many still work.

    Installed over years by different suppliers, recorded to servers and storage that cost money every month, and audited by walking up to them, on the occasions they are audited at all. The exposure only becomes visible when something needs to be reviewed and the footage is not there.

  • The investment case has nothing underneath it.

    How many people use the town centre, on which days, arriving how? Grant applications and capital cases are argued on estimates because the count was never taken, and the projects that would be easiest to justify are the ones that never get measured.

  • An incident happens and the footage goes nowhere.

    Getting relevant vision to Police is a process question before it is a technical one: who is permitted to release what, under which agreement, with what record of who has handled it. Without that settled in advance, it is settled under pressure.

These are three different problems belonging to three different parts of a council. A council can start at any one of them, and starting on one does not commit it to the others.

One place, three layers

A park is watched by cameras, run by lighting and irrigation controllers, complained about down the phone, and recorded in systems the council is obliged to keep secure. Today that is usually four suppliers giving four accounts of the same place, and the council reconciling them by hand when something goes wrong.

  • The place

    Parks, town centres, pools, roads, halls and depots. What the council is actually responsible for, and what residents judge it on. Everything below exists to say something true about this.

  • What reads it

    Cameras interpreting what they see, sensors on fields and buildings, and the phone line a resident rings. Three different sources describing the same park. The field was watered, forty people used it on Saturday, two of them rang about the broken gate.

  • What holds it up

    The network those cameras and sensors depend on, the service desk behind it, and the security programme governing the records it all produces. This layer is invisible until it fails, at which point the two above it stop being true.

What Civic Transform is made of

Existing Ericom solutions, pointed at council work. Each keeps its own page, because a council should read the same description of a service as any other buyer, and procurement should be able to hold us to it. They become a suite when one organisation is accountable for all of them, on one network, under one security programme, with a service desk that knows which camera watches which bridge.

  1. Intelligent Video Analytics CivicVision. Software that interprets what a camera already sees. A bridge watched for flooding, footfall counted in a town centre, movement in a park after hours flagged while it is happening. It is a data capability, not CCTV, and it can start with one camera.
  2. Grounds and Facilities Management CivicPlay. Lighting, irrigation and bookings across fields, courts, parks and reserves, with sensors that raise the work order before a crew is sent out to find out whether there is one.
  3. Cloud Contact Centre CivicEngage. The number residents actually ring, and a record of what was asked and what was done about it that survives the person who took the call.
  4. IT Support The network between depots, libraries, pools and the chambers, the servers the footage lands on, and the service desk operational teams ring. When a camera has stopped recording, this is usually where the fault turns out to be.
  5. Essential Eight Council systems hold public records and ratepayer data. Controls aligned to the Essential Eight as the ASD words them, and reported against, so the position is something an audit and risk committee can be shown.

What we are in this

We are the integrator, not the manufacturer. We choose the platform that fits the council rather than the one we are contracted to move, we put the whole thing together, and the council holds one organisation accountable for whether it works.

The part that matters is what happens after it is installed. Systems like these fail quietly. A camera goes offline, a rule stops firing, a report stops being read. We stay and operate it, onshore, so the capability is still working in year three, when the officer who commissioned it has moved on and the grant acquittal is due.

“I can honestly say that I have never encountered such a quality technology partner in a system implementation before. You are responsive and deliver quality solutions and I would be happy to recommend you to other potential customers.”

Lauren Buckingham
Manager Customer Experience, Shoalhaven City Council
Read the case studies

Questions councils ask

Is this surveillance?

It is a fair question and it deserves a straight answer. Computer vision interprets what cameras see, so where it is pointed and what it is asked to look for are decisions with a community dimension as well as a technical one.

We settle it during scoping. What is being measured, what is retained, who can access it, and what the council is prepared to say publicly about all three. Privacy and compliance are designed in. If a council does not have the community support for a deployment, that changes the scope; it does not justify pressing on.

Can a council start with one site?

Yes, and most should. One bridge, one car park, one question a council needs answered is a real deployment with a defined purpose. If the result earns a second site, the contract is extended; it does not assume one.

What does starting actually look like?

A discovery session with whoever owns the problem. What it uncovers decides the next step, and that step differs by council: sometimes a privacy and compliance engagement, sometimes a site visit and a review of what is already installed, sometimes a demonstration, sometimes a small proof of value on one site. We would rather find out which of those is right than sell the same first step to every council.

Can vision be provided to Police?

Yes, and it is mostly a process question. It needs an agreement about what may be released and by whom, the platform configured so access has to be granted, and a record of who has handled a piece of footage and when. We stand that up as part of the deployment, because it is very difficult to assemble during an incident.

Are we buying into one vendor?

No. We select from several video and analytics platforms based on what a council already owns and what it is trying to do. The work that is hard to replace is the integration, the use-case design and the ongoing operation. A licence can be bought from anybody, and we have no reason to steer a council onto a platform that does not suit it.

Start with one problem

Tell us which of the three you are carrying: the camera estate no register accounts for, the funding case with nothing underneath it, or the footage that went nowhere when it was needed. We will work out what the right first step is, including whether there is one. We work with councils across Sydney, and Illawarra and South Coast councils get technology support from our Wollongong team.

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