Warrnambool City Council cuts parking appeal turnaround by 90%

Warrnambool was receiving a growing number of parking infringement appeals as more citizens moved from handwritten to online submissions. Reviewing each appeal required officers to gather ticket and location data, cross-reference legislation and policy, and draft a response manually. As volumes increased, processing times grew, making it more difficult for the council to meet the 90-day review deadline, after which fines were automatically cancelled.

Warrnambool wanted to improve the appeals management process while keeping decision-making within the council. To help officers complete reviews more efficiently, it needed to bring together ticket, parking, and case management data held across several systems while continuing to meet data privacy requirements.

The council sought a partner that understood the integration requirements and could help develop a solution with the governance and transparency needed to withstand state government scrutiny. Mark Handby, manager of city safety at Warrnambool City Council, says, “Finding the right partner was as much about trust and governance credentials as it was about technical capabilities.”

Warrnambool connected with AWS Partner Symphony3 at a conference where James Plozza, governance manager at Warrnambool City Council, spoke about the use of AI in local government. The council was exploring how AI could support infringement appeals officers by gathering the information needed for each review while leaving the final decision with the officer. Symphony3 proposed developing the solution within Warrnambool’s existing AWS environment. “Having an AWS foundation that met our data sovereignty and security requirements meant we could explore generative AI with confidence,” says Plozza.

Symphony3 conducted AI workshops with the council’s IT team and worked with infringement appeals officers to understand each stage of the review process. Together, they designed the AI Infringement Review Assistant to ingest an appeal, retrieve the relevant ticket and parking history, and check the case against legislation and council policy. AWS Solutions Architects also validated the architecture against AWS best practices for security and data governance. “The process and technical knowledge flowed easily among our team, Symphony3, and AWS,” says Plozza. “We all learned a lot as the solution evolved.”

The AI Infringement Review Assistant uses Symphony3’s SmartGlue integration platform and Beetrix AI agent solution, running on Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Bedrock AgentCore. SmartGlue connects information from the council’s records management and ERP systems, bringing together geographic, payments, vehicle, and resident information. Beetrix AI uses this information to prepare an evidence-based case pack and recommended outcome, which an officer reviews before making the final decision.

Each recommendation is logged in Amazon CloudWatch, creating an auditable record of the information considered and the recommendation generated. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) support access control and secure data storage in line with council policies and security requirements.

Warrnambool and Symphony3 developed and tested the service over two years, consulting with the Victorian State Government and relevant oversight bodies before it went live on July 1, 2026.

Using agentic AI on AWS, Warrnambool reduced the average time to decide parking infringement appeals from about 75 days to 7 days. The solution has also reduced the time officers spend reviewing each appeal by around 80 percent, without requiring them to manually gather information from multiple systems. 

The solution has also improved the consistency and quality of appeal reviews. Each recommendation is supported by an auditable record, helping the council demonstrate how the evidence, legislation, and relevant policies were considered. Handby says, “We’ve increased the consistency and quality of our infringement appeals with our agentic AI solution running on AWS, while allowing officers to focus on making the final decision.” 

Warrnambool is now exploring how the same agentic AI architecture could support other council processes. “The AI Infringement Review Assistant has given us a foundation we can build on as we explore other council processes where agentic AI could support our teams and improve services for residents,” says Handby.