Introduction
What do you do when you’re informed that critical software that you don’t control is being decommissioned? This is what happened to the Office of the Queensland Ombudsman.
One of the roles of the Queensland Ombudsman is to manage oversight of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2010, which involves reviewing the management of public interest disclosures and providing education and advice to state government departments and agencies, local councils and public universities. A public interest disclosure (PID) is a disclosure about wrongdoing in the public sector that serves the public interest. The PID Act encourages the disclosure of information about suspected wrongdoing in the public sector so that it can be properly evaluated and investigated. Disclosures help public sector organisations identify wrongdoing and build better systems.
An effective system for managing PIDs helps to safeguard the integrity of Queensland’s public sector.
Due to an obsolete database module being phased out, the opportunity arose for the Office to design a new platform, purpose-built to achieve improved PID data collection and monitoring and meet the reporting needs of public sector agencies.
With Digital Fusion’s help, the Ombudsman’s Office now has an easy, user-friendly online tool that enables it to better meet its obligations under the PID Act.
Introducing RaPID
Built on our Nutshell framework, RaPID is a ‘Public Interest Disclosure’ reporting tool in two parts. An intuitive and easy to use portal lets government agencies securely log in, lodge and update their disclosure reports. Working with the Ombudsman’s office we also designed a suite of searching and reporting tools for agency users to help them with their own tracking and case management tasks, adding value to their work as well as helping the Ombudsman keep up to date.
We used FileMaker WebDirect to deliver the agency portal online via standard web browsers. This means there are no software or licensing barriers getting in the way and every client agency can easily access and use the system.
With public interest disclosures, confidentiality is critical and therefore, security for RaPID was a priority. Working with the Ombudsman’s IT team, we’ve employed a range of best practice security measures such as:
- Temporary passwords
- Minimum password standards
- Enforced password resets
- ‘End to end’ and ‘at rest’ encryption
At the backend, we created a FileMaker Pro administration tool for the Ombudsman’s office to manage the solution. This includes:
- Managing users and agencies
- Identifying disclosures that need finalising
- Tracking and reporting on categories and outcomes of disclosures
- Tracking usage patterns and identifying any agencies that need encouragement.
How about that Deadline?
It’s always important to deliver on time and on budget. But sometimes the pressure goes up a notch or two. In this case we had a non-negotiable cut-off date for the old system being decommissioned.
The Queensland Ombudsman’s office was pleased that the design and development work met its deadline.
Of course it helps if you happen to be experts in one of the fastest development platforms going! Needless to say we delivered ahead of schedule.
Outcomes
RaPID was designed from the ground up to be user friendly, efficient and easy to use. The web portal is a key interface between the Ombudsman Office and public sector agencies, so we developed a professional, attractive and modern interface.
Postscript...
After using any new system for a while it is always possible to identify additional enhancements to make it ‘just that much better’. After some 4 months using RaPID, the Ombudsman’s Office identified some additional functionality that could be added to improve the agency experience even further, and make monitoring agency use of the database even easier.
We were able to respond quickly once again, and in short order had an additional suite of features implemented, again on-time and under budget