Where is your data actually going? (And why IT hates your new app)

We’ve all done it. You need a quick way to collect data—maybe a volunteer registration form or a community survey—so you Google "free form builder," sign up for a random service, and send the link out.

It works great, until your IT Manager finds out. Or until you realize that the sensitive personal data of your local residents is being stored on a server in a jurisdiction with very different privacy laws to Australia.

For Local Government and Education, Data Sovereignty is non-negotiable.

This is the beauty of building solutions inside your own Microsoft tenant. When I build you a Power App or a SharePoint Intranet, the data never leaves your environment. It stays behind your firewalls, governed by your security policies, and backed up by your existing retention schedules.

You get the slick, modern app experience you want. Your IT team gets the security and compliance they need. Everyone wins.

The "Z: Drive" is where good work goes to die

If your organisation is still relying on a mapped network drive (the "Z: Drive") to store files, you are losing money every single day.

You are losing money in the time staff spend searching for "that PDF from 2022." You are losing money when two people work on the same file and create "Budget_Final_v2_DAVE_EDITS.xlsx." You are losing money when a staff member leaves and their knowledge sits on a hard drive nobody can access.

SharePoint isn't just "files in the cloud." It’s a structured information system.

• Metadata: Don't just save a file; tag it. (Invoice? Contract? Policy?)

• Version History: Never worry about saving over a file again. You can roll back to yesterday's version in two clicks.

• Co-authoring: Three people working on the Annual Report at the exact same time, without locking each other out.

Moving to SharePoint isn't an IT upgrade. It’s an operational upgrade. It changes the way your team talks to each other.

You don’t need a TechOne consultant to build a simple form

Regional Councils are often stuck between a rock and a hard place.

On one side, you have legacy shared services like CouncilBIZ, which can feel slow to adapt to your specific local needs. On the other side, you have the ERP giants like TechnologyOne.

TechOne is a powerful beast, but using it for simple internal workflows is like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. It’s expensive, complex, and if you want to customise a module, you are often looking at exorbitant consulting fees and months of lead time.

So, what do you do when your Depot team needs a simple pre-start check app for the heavy machinery? Or when you need a quick "Gift and Benefits" register to meet new compliance rules?

You don’t need to call the ERP vendor. You already own the solution.

With Microsoft 365, which you are likely already paying for, we can build agile, lightweight Power Apps that handle these specific tasks perfectly.

• Agility: We can build and deploy a hazard reporting app in days, not months.

• Cost: No ongoing subscription fees to a third-party vendor. No massive TechOne consulting bill.

• Mobility: Your field staff can use it on their phones, even in areas with spotty reception (using offline capabilities), and it syncs back to SharePoint the moment they have signal.

Keep the ERP for the heavy lifting (Rates and Payroll). Use SharePoint and Power Apps for the agility your Council actually needs to operate.

OneSchool is the source of truth, but it doesn’t do everything

If you work in a Queensland state school, OneSchool is your reality. It is the monolith. It handles student data, attendance, and reporting. It is the "single source of truth".

But let’s be honest: it leaves gaps. Massive ones.

So, what happens when a Head of Department needs to track asset loans? Or when the Administration team needs to manage a complex excursion workflow that OneSchool’s modules just don’t fit?

Usually, schools resort to "Shadow IT". You buy a subscription to a random EdTech platform for $3k a year. Or you use a rigid SurveyMonkey form. Or, worst of all, you print paper forms that sit in a pigeonhole until they go missing.

Here is the reality: The Department already gives you the tools to fix this.

Your school has access to the Microsoft Power Platform. You can have a custom app for Staff Leave variations, Student Incident logging, or Laptop Loans that sits right inside the standard EQ interface.

• It integrates with your existing Outlook.

• It keeps data secure within the departmental tenant (no data sovereignty risks).

• It costs you zero in additional software licensing.

Stop trying to force OneSchool to do things it wasn’t built for, and stop wasting budget on external subscriptions. Let’s build the bridge between what OneSchool does and what your school actually needs.