"Zope has no licence fees, is all Web based, and has so many benefits across the board," she said. "The licensing problem could have been a big one for councils, but with ZAPP we have removed that obstacle; A$1.2 million is quite cheap for what we have got."

Despite initial concerns from the IT department about using an unknown program, Tyrer said both the previous and current CIOs have been "fantastically supportive" of the ZAPP project, which she hopes will be a beachhead for further deployments.

"Open source is not as well received as I had hoped but it's building momentum," she said. "We're looking at extending open source usage [but] still have to convince people that think if you don't have to pay for [something] it's no good."

Tyrer said Zapp has "opened doors" as to what the DSE can do with software and is now getting the strategists together to develop a "cohesive IT plan".

"It's a snowball effect and will replace the amendment tracking system [now] in Notes and hopefully take over online publishing of planning schemes," she said, adding the business cases for those projects are being developed.