Development of a Business and Systems Roadmap for the Saving our Species and Compliance Services Programs

⁠⁠⁠The NSW Government has recently initiated a significant program of legislative reform to deliver improved land management and biodiversity conservation outcomes in NSW. Two significant programs under these reforms are the Saving our Species (SoS) Program and the Compliance Program, both supported by significant NSW Government funding and both a key deliverable of the Conservation Programs Branch within the Regional Operations Division of the Office of Environment & Heritage. Both programs are at different stages of delivery but both require clarity on the best way to deliver their respective business outcomes within the available resource and the current Enterprise business system environment.

The NSW SoS Program aims to secure threatened plants and animals in the wild in NSW. This is delivered by a range of mechanisms including:

* understanding threatened species, populations and communities;
* funding of targeted priority conservation projects;
* evaluation and reporting; and
* community engagement activities.

The SoS Program is supported by an existing internal database with an associated web application that enables the recording of information on all on-ground activities being funded to support program outcomes. There is also an associated public web application to provide an external view of some of the data to support community engagement activities.

The SoS Program is managed by approximately 50 core staff across NSW, with many other OEH staff involved in delivering the on-ground components of the Program.

The Compliance Program is currently undergoing significant changes as they transition to the regulation of the new legislation that support the NSW Government reforms. To support this transition, a new case management solution is currently being developed on the Salesforce platform to manage compliance and audit cases. A range of business metrics to facilitate performance and outcome reporting have been developed but how the information to report on these key metrics has yet to be developed.

The Compliance Program is delivered by approximately 45 staff across NSW. This is split between centralised Compliance Services staff that provide overarching state-wide strategic support and co-ordination, and audit and strategic project functions, with the remaining being Regional Compliance staff who undertake the investigation and management of compliance cases.

This project is looking to define the3-5 year business and systems roadmap to provide clarity for ongoing resource allocation and investment in gaps that may exist in both Programs. There is also the opportunity to identify synergies across the Programs to provide a single view of a sustainable business model for the delivery of common functions (i.e. business intelligence and reporting, customer relationship management, system and platform support etc.).