As one of Melbourne’s most populous municipalities, the City of Moreland hosts a series of incredibly popular annual events, including the iconic Brunswick Music Festival, Coburg Night Market and Sydney Road Street Party.
For Pip Carroll, Festivals Assistant in the Arts and Culture team, that means a lot of forms. Participant surveys, stallholder applications, venue bookings… the list goes on.
And as with most local government organisations, gathering people’s personal information using online forms is subject to the Australian Privacy Principles. Which means relying on overseas-based online forms providers is not a viable option.
We did use Survey Monkey, but we had to stop using it after a directive from our IT department about using international hosting and compliance with Australian privacy laws.
“We need to communicate and gather data from many applicants to participate in our programming,” Pip explains.
“And so we’ve used online forms for many years ever since they became available to replace pieces of paper.”
“We did use Survey Monkey, but we had to stop using it after a directive from our IT department about using international hosting and compliance with Australian privacy laws.”
The Search for a Local Online Forms Provider
Pip and her team experimented with Microsoft Forms to see if that could provide a workable solution, but like other overseas-based providers, the data collected would ultimately end up on overseas-based servers.
We’ve since used Snapforms for all forms, surveys and data collection for our programming across the whole Arts and Culture team.
It was at that point they started looking for a locally-based online forms provider. Someone suggested Snapforms as a good local provider and the team quickly realised it did everything they needed it to do and also complied with Ausralian privacy laws and regulations.
“We’ve since used Snapforms for all forms, surveys and data collection for our programming across the whole Arts and Culture team,” said Pip.
What was the business challenge?
Moreland City Council’s strong commitment to events and infrastructure that support arts and culture involves a daunting amount of data collection.
Snapforms allows us to collect the information and allows them to upload the images and content we need.
Pip says Snapforms offers the flexibility and customisation she needs to get the data her team requires to manage large-scale events, along with the level of security her IT department mandates.
“One of the reasons we use Snapforms is to get expressions of interest for participation from vendors and stallholders.”
“Snapforms allows us to collect the information and allows them to upload the images and content we need, like certificates, acceptance of terms and conditions and so on.”
“We generally survey any participants after an event as well to gather useful data.”
How was the solution implemented?
Soon after the council joined Snapforms, Pip emailed our team, looking for some advice about creating and formatting her first form.
“I had a form that I needed to get out quite quickly and the team was able to format it for me.”
“It was very helpful that someone could do that and show me the finished product so quickly and I was able to turn it around and get it out there.”
“Since then I’ve learnt to build the forms myself and use all the conditional formatting that we need.”
We’ve struggled to find a single package that does everything we need it to do…
Pip says the next challenge she wants to tackle is working with Snapforms to implement a potential integration with the locally developed stall management software – called Stall Manager – that they are going to use for future events.
“We deal with hundreds and hundreds of stalls in a short period of time that we need to allocate and get through all stages of the process.”
“We’ve struggled to find a single package that does everything we need it to do in terms of our event management software,” laments Pip.
But with Snapforms’ ability to develop custom integrations, Pip and her team are looking forward to streamlining their data collection and event management processes even further.
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