IT ’ S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE , BUT IT ALL HAS TO WORK – AND HAS TO BE ATTENDED TO QUICKLY IF SOMETHING DOESN ’ T WORK .
INDUSTRY WATCH
Royal Far West is Australia ’ s only national charity dedicated to helping country kids with complex behavioral and mental health needs . It operates out of Manly , on Sydney ’ s Northern Beaches , as well as remotely , either via community visits or telecare .
Over 140 clinicians , and an additional 100 staff , support this critically important work .
In FY22 , Royal Far West saw 5,196 country children with complex needs across three states and there were an additional 12,706 beneficiaries – classmates and teachers – of that care . In total , they worked with 169 schools , 61 preschools and 212 communities .
Royal Far West ’ s most complex care program , the Paediatric Development Program or PDP , requires the co-ordination of multiple disciplinary clinicians ’ time . A technology issue with just one in-person or telecare appointment has a cascading impact on others .
“ If a clinician can ’ t see clients , and they often have up to five to six sessions a day or more , then these sessions are lost and you need to reschedule , which comes with complexity . It ’ s also not a great experience for the client , whether they ’ re in the building or sitting at a computer terminal in a country school and the clinician can ’ t connect because of a tech issue ,” said Royal Far West ICT Director Thomas Pinn .
Avoiding this requires high-quality , always-on , phonebased and onsite Level 1 support for clinicians , as well as Level 2 / 3 escalation so that the internal ICT team can resolve more technical challenges .
Up until recently , neither support function worked effectively , and clinician support was via a generic offshore Level 1 service desk with less than satisfactory resolutions .
Indeed , support was also only encouraged in NSW business hours , despite Royal Far West ’ s national reach . Frustrated clinicians waited for support and either sought workarounds themselves or asked Pinn and his ICT colleagues to jump in – defeating the purpose of contracting IT support out in the first place .
For more advanced questions , ICT was either routed through the same Level 1 support or had to wait for a formal meeting with the service provider – where the suggested resolution was often to launch a new project and increase ICT spend .
IT ’ S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE , BUT IT ALL HAS TO WORK – AND HAS TO BE ATTENDED TO QUICKLY IF SOMETHING DOESN ’ T WORK .
Within Royal Far West , the division of labour and responsibility means a managed service provider runs backend infrastructure , end-user computing and support , while internal ICT takes care of the application stack on top of that infrastructure , as well as ICT strategy .
Even before 2020 , Royal Far West was set up for remote – home and community-based – work .
But there was room for improvement . Laptops were slow and unstable , partly due to backup software they ran . Dialling into the network remotely via VPN was manual , requiring multiple clicks – and there sometimes weren ’ t enough remote connections to go around . Collaboration was through traditional network shared drives and decades-old softphone technology .
At its main site in Manly , rooms are equipped with a range of technologies that clinicians use , booking and other screens , whiteboards , AV systems , microphones , and cameras to run telecare sessions . “ It ’ s not rocket science , but it all has to work – and has to be attended to quickly if something doesn ’ t work ,” said Pinn .
Backend ICT infrastructure was hosted in a private cloud , and while it could be consumed as a utility service , it still ultimately involved buying and running servers and storage .
Royal Far West wanted to uplift the clinician and client experience , by making the management , maintenance , and support of its technology systems far more robust . It also wanted to move into the cloud era , leveraging core Microsoft platforms and becoming SaaS Cloudfirst by default – which was seen as a way for ICT to increase its flexibility and adaptability to meet growth goals and changing business needs .
Royal Far West ran an RFP process with 10 Managed Service Providers , all of which had varying degrees of
Thomas Pinn , ICT Director , Royal Far West
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