Digital and Web Presence Strategy
Year: 2019
Scope and summary of activities
Airservices Australia’s (ASA) previous ability to maintain achievement of corporate priorities depended on its capacity to create integrated and intuitive user and service experiences that were fit for the digital age. ASA therefor proposed to deliver improved value through designing end-to-end, user-centric digital and web experiences for existing and future users and audiences, as part of a digital strategy. The problem was characterised by a mix of siloed and distinct websites and subdomains, often externally hosted and managed, involving multiple content owners, support channels, hosting environments, technologies, and vendor contracts.
Strategic Reform (SR) was brough in to assess and document strengths and gaps within the current state environment in alignment with Airservices Australia’s (ASA) strategic direction and business needs. Develop a 4-year strategy to modernise ASA’s digital and web presence, in alignment with other strategic elements – the Corporate Plan, market positioning and brand, customer value proposition, relevant ecosystems, core functions, enabling capabilities, data and technology capabilities, and end-to-end digital transformation.
SR also establish a four-year implementation roadmap for future progress, outlined an integrated set of strategic objectives to be achieved with direct relationships to tangible benefits, defined list of interdependent key actions to ensure successful implementation, and undertook consultation and organisational change management with senior executives and staff.
Outcomes and Benefits
SR’s digital and web presence played a critical role and presented a compelling case for change, and once improved, had wide ranging and cross-functional implications and improvements to both external stakeholders and internal business areas. At a strategic level, ASA will better realise its vision, user satisfaction and brand profile as a valued, safe, trusted, and innovative service provider, increase revenue from core and new services, and improve community satisfaction and staff engagement. At an operational level, a single source of truth will be created; vendors, hosting, support, and publishing arrangements will be consolidated; business areas, content owners and webmasters will be integrated; the digital and web presence technology architecture will be modernised to be more decoupled, dynamic, secure, scalable, resilient, and responsive, and hosted within a hyperscale cloud environment.
SR’s key deliverables for the project were:
- Developed target and transition architectures for data and information architecture as the foundation for data analytics and potential artificial intelligence applications
- Developed application architecture and infrastructure architectures based on migration to a Microsoft Azure hybrid-cloud target state to realise agility, speed and risk mitigation cloud benefits
- Developed a multi-million dollar 3-year case management roadmap recommending a single platform and agile development approach
- Developed current and future state ICT application architecture for key COTS and bespoke systems, including transition to SaaS where appropriate.
SR presented its report to the CEO and Executive Leadership Team and all 20 recommendations within the final report were endorsed. In response to the report delivered by SR, the NCA identified the highest priorities for implementation, guided by strategic priorities of the authority and commissioned SR to complete a detailed future state architecture, focusing on cloud enablement and developing a roadmap to unlock the true benefits of cloud enablement.
