Information management puts Indigenous Corporations in the spotlight
Information management puts Indigenous Corporations in the spotlight
April 10, 2008: Frustrated by what they says is a lack of political willpower, two men with the help of a risk management consultancy, have taken the matter into their own hands to solve some of the inherent challenges that plague indigenous communities. The key is an enterprise management solution they say can empower communities to utilise information as a means to sustaining resources and alleviating poverty across the board.
The Federal Government has consistently funded aboriginal housing projects across the country, yet has still not been able to solve a shortage of accommodation across urban and remote communities. While Governments have been keen cast blame at each other, it’s a problem that runs deeper than any amount of money can rectify. Sustainable assistance and empowerment is required – yet the answers to providing this remain as elusive as ever.
For Patrick Higgins who grew up in the Kimberly, witnessing a lack of viable solutions over the years has been frustrating. “This isn’t an aboriginal problem, this is an Australia problem and something is only going to change if us average jos get off our backside and do something about it,” he says.
So Higgins did. With his childhood friend, Neil Gower, CEO of the Indigenous Corporation, Mamabulanjin, the pair put their frustrations to work and set out to create a method for real life meaningly reports out of a shared system. After searching for a global risk management expert the pair found Business Back Office and its director Tony Robinson, who was contracted out to support the project.
Proof of truth
Together they developed Global Reporting Solutions (GRS), a proof of concept model based on the Mamabulanjin community that utilises technology as key to tracking and sustaining monies spent on facilities and services in aboriginal corporations. The three are now taking the concept to both state and federal levels of government to show its potential in solving a housing crisis that has plagued all levels of government for decades.
“We set it up on a mission to help with the inherent problems existing right across the board,” says Higgins, CEO of Global Reporting Solutions. “From an organisation’s lack of resources to compliance, through to the money and assets, operational health and safety, this information needs to be tracked.”
There are over 2529 indigenous corporations across the country, with most required to undertake certain financial and service obligations under the Office of the Registrar of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Corporation (ORAC.) However obligations to keep records on monies spent, taxes, insurance and other measures can be difficult – especially when those from the ORAT might be relatively straight forward, but other obligations like those from the WA Department of Housing and Works are different.
Gower’s experience with Mamabulanjin puts the situation in perspective. A not-for-profit indigenous enterprise located in Broom WA, the organisation has $14 million in assets and provides everything from sewerage, power, water and waste management, bus transfers and housing rental to 80 urban and remote communities in its jurisdiction. The corporation also manages the indigenous housing, meaning Gower is responsible for 300 houses across a vast geographic area.
A task of this size is a lot of work. Along with the administration, external contractors, reporting and other requirement is a number of systems the corporation admits, it is not particularly efficient. Noting the numerous documents currently stored in a shipping container Gower says, “our systems are fairly archaic.”
Safety in numbers
In some scenarios an organisation will find they’re required to maintain over 500 houses a year, meaning insurance, maintenance, utilities and other expenditure needs to be consistent. Meanwhile the occupants of these houses are supposed to be paying rent. “How can they pay rent?” asks Higgins. “These are third world income status and conditions and they wonder why the average lifespan of a house is 5 – 7 years and why they need to spend another four to six hundred thousand dollars to replace a house?”
The answer, Higgins says, is to reduce costs in the long-run by having a proper maintenance plan in operation, one that with real-time analysis and reporting can take an overview of a group of houses, a community, or even a state to see what is needed and when. This will increase the average lifespan of the house, meaning more houses and less money wasted on replacements.
“This is the only way to solve the problem and I can see it extending across the country,” says Higgins. “You can not solve the problem if you don’t have anything to measure it.”
Before the point of no return
The GRS system could also provide a means to reporting on the funds and grants received by indigenous corporations. Currently any organisation receiving government funds needs to have the capacity to report on how the money is spent by for most indigenous corporations complying with such conditions is difficult due to a lack of resources and skills. The problem is so bad that Higgins believes, not one aboriginal corporation in WA can comply.
Higgins suggests a solution like this, right across the board could be the answer for governments seeking a holistic view across all indigenous corporations in the state, or even across the country. “You just can’t grab that kind of information on a grant by grant basis,” says Higgins.
It’s about dealing with the future as opposed to dealing with the past tense. “The audits we’ve done on a couple of organisations has found that the reason they’re not succeeding is because there are too under-funded to fill the requirements of the grant,” he says.
Working in the present when it comes to funding means problems can be caught before they exhaust the cash. “After the grant is received an audit report is done, then another report and finally something that is released back to the government,” says Higgins. “From the moment of giving you the grant, it’s another 12 months before the government gets information on how it’s going – so if everything is in the process of turning pear shaped, it’s going to be too late.”
Knowledge sharing
Meanwhile a knowledge sharing project of this nature could also support a corporation like Mamabulanjin in scanning its existing records into an electronic archive to enable better access of information from the community. With this, Gower suggests health professional and contractors dealing with training and employment could use the system to find historical information about communicates.
Tony Robinson, director of Business Back Office says with the thousands of aboriginal houses required across the country it makes sense to develop solutions that will ensure an investment is long-lasting. “Doors, windows all sorts of this wear out,” he says. “But if you have the data on all the houses and all the bits within the houses then you can do economies of scale and go out and say that in 2009, we need 40,000 doors. So that’s what the government can get out of this.”
At this point with the proof of concept produced Higgins and his team are seeking government funding to have the programme written and tested accross . “We’ve scoped it right down to the last knitty gritty unit, outlined what’s needed and we’re not seeking that funding,” says Higgins.
The plan is to write the programme once funding is received, roll-out it out initially in Broome then start to head back towards a capital city, test it in Mamabulanjin to check that it’s robust and finally more it further across the state.
Already a number of state heads and Federal government representatives are listening Citing a letters received from politicians in Western Australia, Higgins believes there’s been only positive reactions to the idea.
But Higgins meanwhile is still scathing in his review of some of the problems occurring in aboriginal communities, believing they can be fixed with enough willpower. “When this happens in Iran and Iraq the rest of the world screams but in our own backyard, everyone puts their head in the sand.”
Rather than consistently throwing money at the problem in the hope it will solve itself, it’s these types of solutions that put the responsibility in the hands of the people affected, encouraging a sustainable approach. “This will be from grass roots up, rather than a top end down,” says Higgins. “The people using it are empowered, they have the information and they can share that information between communities.”
The specifics of an Indigenous corporation
According to the Office of the Registrar of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Corporations, there are over 2529 corporations across the country currently required to meet financial and reporting obligations.
Community members can start a corporation through an application process with ORAC involving proposing a rule book, holding meeting and making any requests for exemption under the CATSI Act (in meeting required obligations) and sending the materials to ORAC.
Business Back Office says that while indigenous corporations have been given monies to manage their services, they have not been given training and are therefore exposed to many risks.
The Mamabulanjin Corporation has been used as a test-bed for the Global Reporting Solution, but it’s a little different to other corporations across the country. For one, it’s classified as large, and also deals with the management of housing, essential services, municipal services and tourism activities – obligations that are not always required of smaller entities.