The 2025 graduates of LGPro’s Emerging Leaders Program have developed three new approaches to address key challenges facing the local government sector. 

The 2025 graduates – supported by 2025 program sponsor, HR Legal - developed three projects as part of the leadership program to address issues affecting their peers, from councils sinking resources into duplicated work to residents underutilising services.

Local Policy Hub

The Local Policy Hub is a proposed centralised online platform designed to support local governments in the storage, sharing, and development of council policies.

The Hub intends to reduce duplicated effort, improve consistency, and foster collaboration across councils. This would work through an online platform for councils to share, access, and adapt local government policies, streamline development, and support best practice, with a subscription-based funding model. 

The below report covers key challenges currently facing the sector, including policy duplication, inconsistency, and the inefficiencies involved in locating and adapting comparable policies. It then demonstrates how the Hub supports collaboration, aligns policy content with shared legislative requirements, and enables more efficient, consistent, and best practice policy development across local government.

Download the Local Policy Hub Proposal.

LG TalentEx – Talent Exchange Network

LG TalentEX is a proposed app-based secondment tool designed to make workforce challenges easier to overcome, strengthening capability, collaboration, and career development in local government.

Connecting councils and empowering career moves across local government, the application intends to strengthen collaboration, support professional growth, and enable staff to build experience through meaningful cross-council opportunities.   

Download the LG TalentEX Proposal.

Council Connect App

Council Connect is a proposed mobile solution designed to reposition councils from transactional service providers to proactive community partners.

This project explores how local government can shift from a transactional service model to becoming a lifelong community partner. The app is designed to boost engagement through personalisation and gamification. By addressing outdated perceptions of councils as bureaucratic and digitally irrelevant, especially among younger residents, this initiative aims to strengthen community connections, increase participation in local services and events, and build lasting local pride. 

The app incentivises residents to engage with underutilised services, attend events, and participate in civic and sustainability initiatives. 

Download the Council Connect Executive Report.

Download the Council Connect App Design.

Download the Council Connect Brand Guide.

About the Emerging Leaders Program

LGPro’s Emerging Leaders Program provides a year of leadership focused activities and experiences designed for emerging leaders in local government and those who aspire to positions of leadership in the sector.
 
Since its establishment in 2004, the program has continued to grow and has produced strong outcomes for its participants. Over the years, the program has supported many local government professionals in developing leadership skills. The core learning component of the program is the action learning group project, delivering projects like the above that seek to solve key challenges facing the local government sector.