A project by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage (WA) to digitise over 200,000 Crown Land information artefacts dating back to 1833 has been recognised at the annual Objective customer innovation awards.

The Digitisation project leveraged the department’s Objective ECM to also automate all correspondence relating to 5,000 annual Crown Land Actions. It won the Information Governance Award thanks to its success in reducing the average time from ‘request to outcome’ by three months. Expected savings over five years are estimated to be $A13 million.

Tony Walls, CEO of Objective Corporation, presented the winning customers with their awards at a Gala Dinner on the Gold Coast, as part of the annual Collaborate 2017 user conference.

“The Innovation Awards recognise the outstanding achievements of our customers who are leveraging Objective solutions in new and innovative ways to drive significant business improvements. It’s exciting to see how our customers are harnessing the power of information to shape their digital transformation journeys,” said Walls.

Primary Industries and Regions SA (PIRSA) won the Collaboration Award for their implementation of GDS21 and EzeScan integration with Objective. Already using Objective ECM, they built automated management for creating and closing Objective Connect workspaces with workflow from Objective ECM.

Workflow now actively searches for incoming documents and subfolders in Objective Connect, applies mandatory metadata and assigns privileges to manage workspace folders within Objective ECM. Governance for all information assets is assured, with FOI (Freedom of Information) determinations and associated documents now accessed more efficiently, within 15 minutes of notification.

In recognition of the partnership between Objective and Microsoft, Andrew Lowson, Microsoft’s Next Gen ISV & Advanced Workloads Lead for QLD, presented the Department of Communities WA with the Microsoft Award for Excellence. This award recognised the Department’s Objective ECM Upgrade project and implementation of Objective ECM for browser, workflow, Applink and Objective Connect.

Machinery of Government changes led to the newly formed Department requiring a central mechanism to manage Ministerial correspondence across four divisions. An Objective ECM 10.3 upgrade project commenced (across 12 environments) with high availability, standardised Ministerial workflow for all agencies, browser functionality for new users as well as an upgrade to Microsoft Server 2016 and Microsoft SQL 2016. Objective Connect with workgroups was also established.

The project has centralised the way correspondence is managed and processed, delivering greater efficiency across the entire Department. 

The Process Governance Award was presented to Barwon Water for their web portal integration to manage inspection services with Objective ECM and Objective Connect. With an estimated 4000 bookings and 1500 installation inspections within 12 months, if done manually it was estimated that one full time resource was needed. Using the key functions of Objective ECM (Inform, Perform, Webtalk) combined with Objective Connect, Barwon Water instead created a web portal environment to digitise the booking process, ensuring all information is synced back into Objective ECM.

Three Certificates of Merit were also awarded:

• Information Governance Certificate of Merit: awarded to Primary Industries & Regions SA (PIRSA) in recognition of their work on the PIRSA Intranet, Internet website and SharePoint document publishing initiatives
• Process Governance Certificate of Merit: presented to Counties Manukau District Health Board (NZ) for their Contracts Approval Process
• Microsoft Certificate of Merit: awarded to the Welsh Government (UK) for their Microsoft Azure Migration project.

“The Awards highlight the fantastic achievements of our customers and we are proud to share in their success and help deliver excellence in innovation,” said Tony Walls.

Receiving the Information Governance Award at the annual Objective customer innovation awards from Tony Walls, CEO of Objective Corporation (l) are Pascoe Rechichi, Executive Director Corporate Services and Rachel Roy, System and Information Services Training Officer.