Bruce County and six of its municipalities are teaming up to form the Municipal Innovation Council in partnership with the Nuclear Innovation Institute.
It's a three-year pilot project aimed at finding and implementing smarter and more effective ways of delivering municipal services.
The municipalities involved in the council include Saugeen Shores, Arran-Elderslie, Brockton, Huron-Kinloss, Kincardine and South Bruce.
"Our four areas of focus right now are construction and infrastructure, IT digital service, ensuring that we have livable communities," said Saugeen Shores Director of Strategic Initiatives Jessica Linthorne. "That would include things like affordable housing, access to healthcare, transportation could be a consideration. But then also municipal sustainability, so looking at the way we operate our day-to-day functions."
According to a release, "the MIC is the culmination of an agreement signed last year between the Town of Saugeen Shores and the NII (Nuclear Innovation institute), which gave Saugeen Shores a leadership role in developing the concept and establishing partnerships for the MIC to becoming a collaborative partnership across the region."
The Nuclear Innovation Institute will provide the council with advice, space, technology resources and other supports for its activities.
"It's just a way of, big picture, looking at what the problems are in municipal government, how we can solve them in a way that will affect everybody," said Saugeen Shores Deputy Mayor Don Matheson. "So instead of each community having to deal with issues, we could do it together."
There were more than 100 people at the MIC's inauguration yesterday at an "Innovation Breakfast" in Port Elgin. The launch was following by a workshop led by Lindsay Farlow, the Head of Corporate Innovation at Communitech in Kitchener Waterloo.