The council's Rebel Woodham and Catherine Davis are pictured with Facebook avatar Moreen collecting a Reporting to your Community award for small councils at the annual Local Government Week awards at Chatswood last week.

"Moreen Plains" is the public face of the council's Facebook link with residents, which has addressed the problem of communicating with a small population spread over a large geographic area.

Moreen went viral during recent flooding with nearly 5000 hits by her friends in a single day. She has been particularly successful in talking to a historically difficult audience for councils to reach - the X and Y generations.

"She's a winner, humanising the council, enabling efficient communication to the residents of Moree Plains," the judges said.

The president of the Shires Association, Ray Donald, said more and more councils are communicating using new forms of technology and embracing social media.

"We had several nominations for phone apps, crisis communications using Facebook and interactive community consultation websites," he said.

Other winners of the Fairfax Media-sponsored RH Dougherty awards for communication were:

Forbes Shire Council: Flood Event Crisis Communications - "Truly an excellent effort by all to react to an emergency situation."

Leichhardt Council: Callan Park Master Plan - "A quite different project whose strategic objective was to develop a best practice, transparent engagement process, facilitated by a pioneering, 'web- enabled' consultation model".

Bankstown City Council: Recycle Right! At Bankstown - "Nothing glamorous about the subject but a great project and the fact that they want to share the knowledge is brilliant."

Lake Macquarie City Council: Securing our Future booklet - "An excellent way of engaging the community on a difficult issue in a booklet beautifully presented".

Cr Phyllis Miller, Forbes Shire Council: the Robert Wilson Award for promoting regional co-operation.