Australia’s Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources (DISER) has successfully implemented the ServiceNow Protected Platform to streamline and automate enterprise service management for more than 4,000 employees.
DISER is the first Australian Government department to use the ServiceNow Protected Platform, which was built to meet Australian data security and sovereignty requirements for government and regulated industries. The major federal Australian department procured and implemented the platform in less than 6 months.
The platform is part of the department’s service management transformation, which started with IT before expanding to cover service delivery for a variety of teams and corporate functions including procurement, finance, payroll requests, legal services, and communications support.
Eric Swift, Vice President and Managing Director ANZ at ServiceNow, said: ““As a result of this go‑live, DISER will significantly improve its employees’ experience so staff can focus on what’s important: improving outcomes for citizens. In both the private and public sectors, outstanding digital experiences for employees are the key to unlocking productivity and freeing up time. This is driving significant demand from a range of regulated industries for the ServiceNow Protected Platform.”
“In our work with more than 100 Australian state and federal agencies, we see them facing increasing demands to deliver more with less, while needing to adapt to increasing security and data sovereignty obligations. Using the ServiceNow Protected Platform, DISER can access the full power of the Now Platform with in‑country support and embedded security, to be compliant with IRAP requirements for government data handling at the PROTECTED classification level,” continued Mr Swift.
Steve Stirling, General Manager of ICT Operations at DISER, said ServiceNow was being used for multiple functions across the department: “By using one platform to manage complex tasks and requests, we have improved our automation and streamlined a range of administrative tasks, enabling us to assign team members to more important work,” Mr Stirling said.
ServiceNow replaced a variety of systems and processes, including IT software that was nearing end of life, while other teams had used a mixture of tools to manage requests. The new platform consolidates the functions into a single portal, giving employees one place to make requests and to access a range of corporate services.
Requests are now automatically routed to the right teams and individuals, eliminating a manual reviewing and sorting process. The portal enables real‑time visibility on the status of requests, and the ability to track and measure performance analytics. It also provides self‑service capability, a virtual agent to assist with enquiries, and a knowledge base of articles, making information easy to find.
The new portal for DISER went live late last year. In the month of March 2022, there were 2,300 knowledge article views and more than 6,500 self‑service requests, with just 164 requests lodged via email. Over 500 virtual agent conversations were also completed.
Working with implementation partners Deloitte and Canberra‑based BT Automation, DISER began rolling out ServiceNow in June last year. The first phase was completed by August 2021, covering ServiceNow ITSM, IT Asset Management, and the ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB). The second phase of the project, covering service management for other corporate functions, was completed in December 2021.
The ServiceNow Protected Platform is run on Microsoft Azure, and was built to be compliant with regulation governing data sovereignty and security – meeting IRAP requirements for sensitive government data handling at the PROTECTED classification level. This means the agency can access the full range of cloud solutions built on the Now Platform, with all data kept in‑country, and all support services and support staff based in Australia.
Sonia Eland, Lead ServiceNow Partner, Deloitte Consulting: “The team at DISER considered user experience to drive adoption of new services, as well as an implementation approach that would deliver business value early and often. With this in mind, they took a best‑in‑class approach to the project, by engaging employees early in the change process, implementing out‑of‑the‑box functionality and adapting processes to best suit the new system. Though its new engagement portal and then progressively adding features like virtual agents, together with shutting down old inboxes and manual tools, DISER has reaped the rewards with near total adoption across a large workforce, delivering significant efficiency gains across multiple teams and functions.”
Mike Bennet, Managing Director, BT Automation, said: “Our long‑history working with Government means we have a deep‑understanding of public sector requirements and ways of working, which was crucial to completing such an extensive implementation so rapidly. The strong collaboration between all parties and the complete focus on driving positive outcomes for the Department has led to multiple benefits and rapid time to value.”
