When high temperatures, prolonged drought, and lightning strikes engulfed large parts of Australia’s wilderness in late 2019 to mid -2020, Australians climbed heavily to help with rescue and cleanup efforts. .
The New South Wales (NSW) Rural Fire Service (RFS), a government agency under the NSW State Public Sector, was flooded with questions and applications from people who wanted to join the fight. But an outdated, paper -based approach to managing new recruits has hampered the organization’s response.
Needs a better system
As the largest volunteer fire service in the world, RFS oversees the deployment of more than 75,000 people to assist in everything from bush clearing to evacuating people in dangerous ways. Throughout the fire season in 2019-2020, the limited resources and legacy of the RFS system hampered too much scope of work.
“We had about 10,000 volunteer applications that doubled our normal load,” said RFS Chief Information Officer John Danson. The staff of the organization struggled with the weight of this increased volume.
Up to that point, all applications were completed by hand, on paper, and funneled into the network of local and regional teams until they reached RFS headquarters. Once at headquarters, applications are carefully entered into a central database one at a time.
“We don’t really know how many applications might have been lost on the way to headquarters, because there’s no central tracking system,” Danson said. “No intelligence, no workflow, no dashboarding.”
Gaining visibility and efficiency
Although RFS is larger than many public sector agencies in Australia, its DNA remains rooted in a community -based ethos and culture that has made it difficult to implement comprehensive change.
“Our people are based in communities across the state, with varying levels of expertise and access to technology,” Danson explains. “That bad fire season has shed light on our structures and processes, and the opportunity to improve technology and the experience for volunteers, staff, and community members who want to join.”
At the beginning of its innovation, RFS used Deloitte to provide recommendations for technological upgrades, including bringing ServiceNow to connect multiple tasks, teams, and departments through digital workflows.
The first priority is to make the paper-based application a one-click task that will seamlessly fill in different fields (especially name and other demographic information) in different databases. This will maintain data integrity and reduce duplication.
Using ServiceNow Customer Service Management and App Engine, RFS can now see the status of each application, where it sits on the journey from “submitted” to “accepted” (something applicants can also see), if what actions still need to be taken. , etc.
The next challenge is to digitize the business processes that deliver support services throughout the organization — including everything from logging maintenance requests to ordering a mobile phone. The goal is to manage everything through a centralized, easy -to -use dashboard rather than “drown in forms,” as Danson said.
The main benefit of using a platform to digitize these service offerings is the ability to integrate them into human resources, IT, engineering, logistics, finance, and procurement. It offers a simpler request process for end users.
Preparing strike teams for action
Seamlessness is ultimately up to the core functions provided by the RFS — the so-called “strike teams” built to fight large fires. Previously, remote teams had to fill out Excel forms stating their specific requirements in responding to a disaster. These include factors such as:
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Time required for response (two, three, or five days)
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Whether volunteers have to work a day shift, night shift, or both
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The number of personnel or vehicles required
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The specific date and time of the response
The central office will then scramble to fill these requirements, sending requests for people and materials to the RFS’s nearly 2,000 individual brigades.
Under the new blueprint, resources can be matched to requirements automatically, so brigades can find what they need right away. “Building strike teams will be faster and easier,” Danson explained.
“When you’ve had campaign fires — these multiple simultaneous fires — you can forget things. How many requests did you release? Who returned their responses? Now everything goes into a common view with a neat queue so you can keep track of where everyone is. “
A very important partner
The scale of the work faced by Danson’s team emphasizes the need for a true partner who can offer technical expertise and a high level of advice on strategy and overall implementation.
“I’ve used other technology vendors before, and you pay the equivalent price of the software and then you have to go and find a separate implementation partner to advise on best practice implementation,” Danson said.
“ServiceNow, on the other hand, is there to make sure we get value from the software we buy from them. I have a ServiceNow person in the room who can almost say, ‘We recommend the design proposed to You. This is in line with our best architectural practice, and it is done in a way that is easy to support after live. ‘ And all of that is incredibly helpful. ”
Learn more about how ServiceNow helps government agencies improve processes.
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