The term community means "a group of interacting people, living in some proximity (i.e., in space, time, or relationship). Community usually refers to a social unit larger than a household that shares common values and has social cohesion".

In general, people want a safe and healthy place to live, a sustainable environment, opportunities for social interaction, opportunities for employment and reliable infrastructure. Local Government is now being asked to adopt new frameworks, created by the State and Territory Governments. The framework is to give clear guidance as to how each of these individual plans should be structured so they relate to common community aspirations and create a holistic picture. 

Creating a community plan is only one part of delivering community values. Community plans do not exist in isolation – land use and infrastructure planning produces social, environmental and economic outcomes, and vice-versa – they are connected.

But how do these aspirations translate into manageable and measurable community plans?

Firstly there is the Community or Strategic Plan, this plan usually spans 10 to 20 year (depending on location). It is the blueprint of what a community wants its region to be. It includes the high level visions of the Council and community, such as;

• What sort of lifestyles will people want? 
• What values are important to the community? 
• What is needed to make sure there is a quality of life in the region in the long term? 

The long term visions are broken into "themes". These themes have actions that are measurable and manageable.

Following on from the Community or Strategic Plan is the Corporate or Delivery Plan. This document is reviewed annually but has a life-cycle of between 4 to 10 years, again, depending on location. This plan breaks the Community Plan "themes" into actions and deliverables and has a relationship to both Asset Management and Financial Management Plans.

Finally there is the annual Operational Plan. This is a working plan that encompasses the annual program of works to be completed by Council linked to the high level themes. 

Across all of these plans there is a logical cascade of information. Managing this information, creating all of the associations and maintaining the relationships between plans across many years can now be achieved with COMMUNITY from ICON.

ICON's COMMUNITY suite of modules enable Councils to create, manage, amend and link plans together. COMMUNITY provides the ability to cascade the community aspirations from the top level 10-15 year  Community or Strategic plan through to the 4-5 year Delivery Plan and the annual Operational Plans (the duration of the plans are dependent on location).