NZPI SPECIAL VIRTUAL EVENT | A Digital Future
Claire is an urban planner and computer programmer with broad professional experience in city government and consulting. Over the past few years Claire has led the development of Planning Institute of Australia’s (PIA) PlanTech Principles and continues as an active member of PIAs PlanTech advisory group. Claire sees an urgent need for planners to get to grips with the opportunities and challenges posed by digital technology and is currently completing a PhD at UNSW in order to devote their full time towards achieving this end. They are the recipient of a John Monash Scholarship and a UNSW Scientia Scholarship and are known internationally for their work in this area.
Tech and Planning – It’s Time to Take Charge
Whilst most planning systems contain digital elements, planning is yet to experience digital transformation to the extent evident in the commercial property, financial and legal sectors which have seen extensive restructure, digitisation, and process automation. This is set to change however as substantial efforts to improve the digital delivery of government services gain pace, with planning firmly on the agenda. Whilst the automation of mundane and routine tasks may seem self-evident or even inevitable, this process of digital transformation has much deeper and systematic implications for the way planning is undertaken, and its place in the rest of our rapidly digitising world.
In this session Claire will present anecdotes from practice alongside their research which most recently involved a multi-national survey of over 600 planners looking into their day-to-day use of digital technology and data, along with the work of PIA’s PlanTech Principles, outlining their expectations and hopes for the future. Claire will address how we can best prepare for the digital transformation of the planning profession, outlining the case for planners to be actively involved in the process to ensure digital efforts are aligned with the achievement of good planning outcomes for our cities and regions.
