NSW Rural Fire Service

About This Project

This complex organisation has regional operations with significant assets under management and a distributed and large volunteer workforce. They required a digital strategy and roadmap to manage changing expectations and opportunities, and to support improved delivery of outcomes, a renewed approach to their digital technology delivery and operating model.

The Situation

NSW Rural Fire Service NSW (Australia) Rural Fire Service (RFS) is one of the largest fire services in Australia. Information Professionals was commissioned to review and refresh its Digital Technology Strategic Plan and review existing technology governance and sourcing arrangements to ensure that the business as usual and project work could be planned and completed in line with strategic and operational requirements.

The Approach

The work needed to ensure that it provided the context for any existing or future decisions and protect the long-term objectives of all interested and involved parties.  As a result, they also required fresh thinking on the governance, ICT delivery and operating model and supporting organisational and governance structures.

Information Professionals followed a four-stage approach:

1. Initiation and Discovery which revealed and reviewed key documents and the views and opinions of Executives and Key Business and Technology stakeholders.
2. An Assessment of the Current Situation established a baseline of the current Digital Technology environment including its strengths and weaknesses.
3. Development of a Digital Vision and Change Recommendations that established the desired future state of Digital Technology and identify the gaps that will need to be filled in terms of applications, information, processes, technology and capabilities. A change impact assessment was completed.
4. A finalisedDigital Technology Strategy and Roadmap reflected any feedback received and delivered the final documents including the Technology Roadmap.

This work was followed by a review and design of the ICT Operating Model, and associated Resourcing and Sourcing arrangements in order to maximise the delivery outcomes of the revised strategy.  This considered constraints such as head count caps and expenditure, plus opportunities such as improved business / IT collaboration, bi-modal and agile techniques, and leveraging their large volunteer expertise.

The Strategic and Governance Framework, included: a new ICT Governance Charter & Principles; Establishing a PMO; Change & Quality Management Framework; Updated KPIs; Improved Enterprise Architecture and EA Strategy & Standards; Improved Vendor Management Capability; Improving resource management; and Clarifying ICT services, roles and responsibilities.

The Impact

The strategy, roadmap (including scheduled initiatives and costs) plus supporting changes to governance, sourcing and operating model, empowered the organisation to implement the strategy and achieve its objectives.  The strategic initiatives have been implemented or are being pursued.