Guided Self-Service Contract Assembly and Approval Workflows

⁠⁠⁠Key problem/s

CSIRO needs to replace its in-house, bespoke, contract generation system that has reached its end-of-life. We seek a modern, fit-for-purpose contract lifecycle management platform that will retain current efficiencies (in terms of guided self-service contract assembly and approval workflows), drive productivity, and uplift self-service experiences of contract lifecycle management activities at CSIRO.

 We are looking for much more than a mere like-for-like replacement. Our ambition for this initiative is to create a shared ecosystem for CSIRO’s non-legal staff (End Users) and in-house legal and paralegal staff (Power Users) to initiate, prioritise, allocate, self-serve, draft, approve and capture contract-related workflow, outputs, and records in real time, as both a collaborative platform and a ‘single source of truth’ (the Solution).

  We seek to understand what products exist in the marketplace, how well they align with our existing capabilities, where they can mature our contract management practices, what the implementation and ongoing costs may be, and what the return-on-investment is.

 The Solution will look to deliver an integrated environment in which all of CSIRO’s (legal and non-legal) staff can interact efficiently and effectively with each other to conduct all the organisation’s commercial contracting including:

1. facilitated transparent and efficient interactions with business,
2. access to “ready to sign” contract templates that non-legal staff can populate details for and push through an approval workflow,
3. sophisticated, rule-based, self-service contract assembly by non-lawyers, and sophisticated, risk-based approval and review workflows.
4. user-determined, relative, prioritisation and workflow allocation; and
5. use of AI solutions to improve productivity, promote clause reuse, and offer new interactive experiences.

The users and their needs

CSIRO comprises over 5,000 staff, across 50 sites internationally, and works with over 4,000 industry and government partners to improve the lives of people everywhere through our science.

CSIRO’s in-house legal team includes lawyers who provide commercial contract/transaction support and lawyers who work primarily on non-transactional matters (such as privacy, employment law, health and safety, procurement, property, litigation, etc). In addition, CSIRO has a Commercial Contracts team made up of paralegals who support lower risk/complexity commercial contracts. Combined, these teams comprise nearly 80 staff.

These teams do not operate like a “law firm within a business”. They are deeply integrated in CSIRO’s operations and work collaboratively with multi-disciplinary teams to deliver organisational outcomes across the spectrum of CSIRO’s activities. They participate actively in all business phases from strategy, design, approvals, and decision-making to delivery and ongoing management.

CSIRO’s non-legal staff range from scientists, researchers and business development support staff through to finance, human resources, procurement, infrastructure, and IT specialists.

Work already done

Technical/business constraints

Data Location – All hosting, data storage and backup facilities for the product, services, and related data (including any cloud provider hosting data centre locations) is located within Australia.

Standards

1. Adherence to the minimum in the Australian Government metadata standard (AGLS) according to the value of the information.
2. The Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF)
3. Other security standards as required.

Privacy – All services and solutions proposed will need to comply with the requirements of the Privacy 1988.

Key dates/ milestones

The information provided will be used to form a business case for a decision around funding and potential procurement pathways for a solution. Any follow up procurement activity would not be anticipated to commence until QTR1 next calendar 1.