Primary Industries and Regions SA (PIRSA) Digital Workspace Manager Deanna Fleming has been announced as the winner of the 2020 Bernadette Bean SA Records Management Service Excellence Award.  The award is bestowed in honour of the late Bernadette Bean.

The award judging panel selected Deanna in recognition of “her continuous passion for records management service excellence, and dedication and commitment to the records and information management industry. This includes Deanna’s leadership in leveraging PIRSA’s best practice records and information management framework and Objective ECM system to:

• drive best practice digital transformation, and innovative process automation and system integration
• promote information governance
• share knowledge, methodologies, experiences and reasoning with her peers in other agencies to further enhance business outcomes for PIRSA and other government agencies across Australia.
   

Examples of Deanna’s significant records and information management contributions and achievements include the design and implementation of agency-wide best practice information governance and digital transformation initiatives to revolutionise the way PIRSA delivers services to its customers and internal users.

This was achieved by harnessing the power of PIRSA’s Objective ECM system workflow, Objective Connect and other product functionality to minimise organisational processing response times, facilitate collaboration and information sharing, improve customer service, and promote information governance.

Deanna and her team were able to derive significant business benefits, productivity gains and increased compliance via the digitisation of records; business process re-engineering; and innovative design, programming and implementation of automated process solutions.

Some examples of agency-wide automated business critical processes implemented relate to the management and approval of ministerial and chief executive correspondence, agency and government briefings, parliamentary estimates, grant applications, human resource onboarding and employee contract activities, ECM system administration tasks, and other targeted business activities.

Other innovative initiatives led by Deanna include the development of ECM system integrations with other business applications to improve information governance, productivity and business performance.

Examples include automating the capture and governance of information and conversations created in Objective Connect digital workspaces and Microsoft Teams channels into PIRSA’s ECM system.

The ECM vendor, Objective Corporation, subsequently incorporated these solution improvements into Objective Connect core product functionality, and also released a new Objective Governance for Microsoft Teams Module which has been adopted by other customer sites within Australia and New Zealand.

The availability of the new solutions became even more pressing when COVID-19 led to the rapid deployment of collaborative platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Objective Connect, to thousands of team members across government and other organisations to facilitate collaboration and information sharing while working remotely from home or other alternative office locations.

Other PIRSA ECM best practice integration solutions previously developed and implemented by Deanna and her former team members resulted in them winning two national Objective Collaboration and Integration Innovation Awards in 2016 and 2017. These solutions led to significant business efficiencies, and version control and information governance improvements, and were subsequently shared with and adapted by other SA Government customer sites.

Deanna was also selected to recognise her efforts in sharing methodologies, learnings and other knowledge with her peers in other agencies, and contributing to the industry to promote the importance of information governance and best practice.

This includes Deanna’s mentoring of team members in other agencies; and her delivery of case studies, articles, ECM system process automation workflow demonstrations and presentations to information management and ICT professionals and executives at various ECM and professional association user group, convention, roadshow, site visits and other events in SA and across Australia.

The 2020 award runner-up is Port Augusta City Council Records Co-ordinator, Melody Poole. The panel awarded a Service Excellence Merit Certificate to Melody based on “her dedication and commitment to best practice records management; and her outstanding achievements in developing, implementing, managing and maintaining a holistic records management framework for the Port Augusta City Council.” This encompassed Melody’s work on:

• the council’s Micro Focus Content Manager (HP RM) EDRMS upgrade projects and digital transformation initiatives. These projects were rolled out across 14 council regional sites which deliver diverse and complex community and remote services
• the council’s records management policy, business classification scheme, disposal schedule, digitisation, monitoring and reporting, change management, disposal, storage, disaster recovery, training, succession plan and other programs implemented to encourage EDRMS uptake, compliance and best practice.

The Merit Certificate also recognises “Melody’s willingness to mentor and develop her team members, and to share her knowledge and information with other regional councils.” The panel was particularly impressed to learn that Melody:

• achieved the above outcomes while she faced and overcame the challenges of working in a remote regional council, where access to resources and opportunities to engage with, and learn from, industry experts and peers in other councils are limited
• is considered the ‘go to’ person for records management advice across the Northern Records Management Group
• has been instrumental in developing a model of best practice records management for the region’s councils.

Visit the award website Current and Past Award Nominations page to learn more about their achievements.