Sector reporting portal

Transcript

ALAN BARRETT:

Before commencing, I would like to acknowledge the Whadjuk people from the Noongar nation. They are traditional custodians of the land we're meeting on today, I pay my respects to any member of the community here today, to their elders, past and present and future. And our acknowledgement of country is very pertinent to our purpose in meeting today, as we think about workforce data collection and look at some new tools for supporting that.

ALAN BARRETT:

The Commission recently launched as strategy document called Attract Appoint and Advance - An Employment Strategy for Aboriginal People. And without good quality workforce data, um, the ability to set objectives, the ability to track progress of agencies as they seek to implement those initiatives is severely compromised, so workforce data and the quality of data is absolutely at the heart of so many workforce planning objectives. So, the State Government's committed to improving employment outcomes for indigenous people, the Public Sector Commission has a key role to play for our traineeship programs and things. But, it's the people that are working in agencies to collect that data, to improve response rates in the workforce data, that really, sort of, give us a clear idea of how well that is progressing.

ALAN BARRETT:

So, we really hope that the changing system will be a useful catalyst for other initiatives. So, as you are briefing your, sort of, peers and colleagues, this is, you know, potentially a really good time for just getting the focus back on the quality of the data. But, I realise I'm probably preaching to the converted on that topic, and I want to just emphasise how encouraged we are at the level of interest in the new platform and your attendance today.

ALAN BARRETT:

The Sector Reporting Portal is the name we have given to this tool, because we see it has potential to go beyond just workforce data collection. And it's a new way of engaging agencies with workforce data collection. A number of things, kind of, are the drivers around this, so, as you are all aware, all agencies are required to provide a workforce data to the Commission as part of the HR MOIR data collection process. And since 2008, that's been delivered through Workforce Analysis and Collection Application, known as the WACA system.

Page 1 of 16

ALAN BARRETT:

Now, that WACA system was a shared, sort of, national platform, developed interstate and it was serviced by a company called AEC Group. Now, just to get a bit of a sense of people's history around workforce data collection. Can I just get a quick indication of anyone who remembers the last transition into the WACA system? Have we got any of you? A few workforce data veterans, good, good, alright. Good to know.

ALAN BARRETT:

At the beginning of 2015, the AEC group announced, after the contract end date, in late 2015, they would no longer provide support services for the WACA system. So the consortium, sort of, existed, a consortium of states that were, sort of, sharing that platform. But the underlying provider, sort of, called quits on that arrangement. And all the different members of that consortium had to, sort of, say, "Well, how do we want to play this? Do we still look for some kind of collective arrangement?"

ALAN BARRETT:

And Tasmania opted to run WACA on their own. Other jurisdictions, including WA, sought to find a replacement system that might do more than the um, the base, sort of, WACA tool. So, it was proposed that remaining jurisdictions share a new collection system. Queensland, as the chair of the WACA consortium would explore that and present to the group. But, none of the, sort of, the options were, sort of, suitable for all players. There were technical constraints due to different definitions that had been applied in different jurisdictions and different types of workforce information was being collected.

ALAN BARRETT:

Because that was a bit of a surprise announcement from the AEC Group, sort of, timelines and budgets was a key issue for all jurisdictions and certainly, that included Western Australia. And the use of different analytical and reporting platforms by different jurisdictions also made a big difference. So WACA has really just been a tool for collecting data. Different jurisdictions had, sort of, gone their own way with, sort of, platforms for reporting and doing some of the data analysis. And states had invested considerably in some of those platforms. So that the chance of, sort of, finding, sort of, a one size fits all was… was pretty low.

ALAN BARRETT:

So, look, after… in Western Australia, after looking at a range of options, we decided to adopt a highly customisable platform called CloudBase. So, it is a cloud based solution. We actually don't call it cloud based, because it ends up being, sort of, a fairly confusing term. The product was developed by a group called Resolve Software Group and they were already providing our case management system, so for breach of standards and for minor misconduct matters and even our general inquiries. And a lot of our workflow is run on, sort of, the case management system.

Page 2 of 16

ALAN BARRETT:

So, the integration opportunities were quite attractive and the, you know, fairly short timeline that we had to put something in place and the cost efficiency, as you know, we already have the license for that product. It became a fairly obvious choice for us. The advantage for moving to this approach was that we, sort of, have now a combined tool for data collection and it's got some of the analytical and reporting tools that, sort of, sit around that, that are quite attractive… quite attractive. And that we can integrate some of the information we collect into our case management system.

ALAN BARRETT:

The other thing that was a key issue for us is that this kind of approach really aligned well with the Government Chief Information Officer’s theme of transitioning into cloud services, subscription based services, don't buy new products if you've got one that can do the job.

ALAN BARRETT:

So, what are we aiming to do? Well, in the short-term, the Sector Reporting Portal has been built and the user acceptance testing has commenced. And just like to extend my appreciation for those agencies that have assisted with that and started to provide some early feedback. We are piloting the platform for this quarterly submission and plan to undertake a broader rollout for the next quarterly submission in January. The transition to... from, sorry the transition of HR MOIR from WACA to the Portal would enable agencies to work through issues relating to the accuracy and quality of their data submission more efficiently.

ALAN BARRETT:

So, Alan Lee is going to, sort of, take you through exactly how that, sort of, operates. But, some of the key things, there should be less, sort of, manual intervention or waiting times for responses and queries to the PSC. Because we are, sort of, operating straight into the same data set. So we hope to decrease the time spent on those kind of tasks as well as the overall overlap time for completing a submission, finalising a submission.

ALAN BARRETT:

The new system will integrate the data collection process with our case management system, so, that, for us, anyway, more efficient management of the data collection process across all of the agencies. To date, we have received terrific, sort of, positive response and some quite constructive feedback in the user acceptance testing and we'd really like that continue, so we are very… we are very open to suggestions. And please don't be backwards in coming forward if there is aspects of the system that you find a little bit clunky or are not as…intuitive as you would like.

Page 3 of 16

ALAN BARRETT:

One of the other benefits of, sort of, working in a, sort of, are familiar platform, we have already got a base of technical support skills around the system. And certainly Alan and Rose and others in that team have really built through the development phase, a fantastic, sort of, awareness of possibilities of the system. So, you know, we… we feel that we're, sort of, on that development path and taking, sort of, baby steps. But we really want to make it work as well as possible. So, we will be reviewing the data definitions in 2017 to improve the representation of the sector's complex workforce in the data and collection and reporting function that we have.

ALAN BARRETT:

And that is going to provide an opportunity to further tighten some of the data fields. Where we would like to go in the long term, well, we are just scratching the surface of what the system is capable of supporting. The transition provides… the transition to, sort of, what we are calling, sort of, the base model, really, it’s a foundation for future online service, online self-service style business intelligence functions and hopefully our vision is to get to customisation… customisable dashboard reports and data analysis. We are very aware that, sort of, to make it as a valuable tool for agencies is about how can you extract some information, what kind of reports are going to be most useful in your agency.

ALAN BARRETT:

That sort of, that… that will be a work in progress for a while and that's why we are really hopeful that you'll, sort of, engage and participate and be willing to, sort of, make suggestions about the kind of priorities you have in that space. So we hope to increase the use of online applications, reducing the dependency on manual assessments. The team is determined to work in partnership with you to provide better support and try and make these processes as efficient as possible. We see a number of opportunities to facilitate some sort of independent co-operation between agencies on resolve issues.

ALAN BARRETT:

So, look, one of the benefits even coming together this morning is the, sort of, the network opportunity to be meeting with agencies who’ve got a similar profile or have got similar, sort of, challenges surrounding improving the quality of workforce data and we would like to take that aspect and, sort of, take that online. So, we're um, we are looking at a communication application that's called Yammer. Have we got any people that are familiar with Yammer? Anyone that has previously used Yahoo Groups? Anyone on Facebook?

ALAN BARRETT:

Alright, Yammer is a little bit like a sort of like a corporatey Facebook, but the Government Information Office has been… found it really useful in creating a kind of a community in practice. There is, sort of, a closed Yammer group that is open to Chief Information Officers across the sector and it's just an easy place that people can go and share information, ask questions. There's some sort of ground rules around that, in terms of how information is shared but it's… it's

Page 4 of 16

become a really useful way of having…facilitating some peer support, good information sharing and we are really interested to apply that with… with a group of people working in the workforce data space. So that's, sort of, the space to watch.

ALAN BARRETT:

That won't be, sort of, the only way that we seek to engage with you, so we won't be turning our back on traditional communication approaches. And, you know, as excited as we are about the transition and the opportunities that sit around this platform, we are also trying to stay pretty grounded. So, we are sticking to the knitting, collecting the data, making sure that's clean, making sure that's accessible, and, you know, doing our best to present it back in a way that's really useful to agencies and also to meet our reporting obligations.

ALAN BARRETT:

So, once we are, sort of, confident that is all going, we will certainly then think very much about the, sort of, development pathways for some of the new features. So, we expect there will be a little bit of a period of adjustment. And we want to make that as painless as possible and I hope that today is a really good start for that. We will… we'll get the Yammer platform established and… and, sort of, look out for invitations to join that. And um, we will be engaging with you in the longer term, but also mindful of that is make sure that what we are doing is, sort of, practically achievable. We know for many of you this is not the only, sort of, function that you have in your agencies. So, our roadmap towards this, sort of, improved workforce data provision, collection and reporting involves staying focused on the quality and maintaining a solid foundation of data.

ALAN BARRETT:

Improving the efficiency and user experience of the system around those… those core functions. Exploring some of these communication channels, a new way of engaging with our, sort of, key partners in workforce data and closing the loop with better access to reports and analysis as that is needed. So, in a moment I will hand over to Alan Lee who will show you a few screenshots and talk a bit about how the process operates. But, before doing that, I would like to take this opportunity just to, sort of, publicly acknowledge the work that Alan and Rose and Allison, Teo and Andrea have done. We… This was a bit of a surprise, we were thinking that the WACA consortium had, sort of, established itself. We didn't expect that the plug was going to get pulled on that. And this team have identified, built, developed, tested a new system, while continuing to run the old one and it's been a fantastic job, so thank you very much for doing that. And with that, I will pass over to Alan.

ALAN LEE:

Thanks Alan. Good to see all of you, thank you for coming this morning. It's good to see a lot of familiar faces, and also get to know a few... put some names to faces as well. We have been, you know, communicating by email, every… every three… three, four months and, you know, just seeing you guys make me happy.

Page 5 of 16

ALAN LEE:

Like Alan… Alan said earlier, this was a little bit of a surprise for us but I think we managed to pull through and put something together. I'll just get through the slides which Alan forgot to get through. The Sector Reporting Portal, as you will see in a moment was developed with keeping… the idea of keeping things familiar for users, for agencies. So we have intentionally created to have the same messages, the same checks and the same reports that come up as a minimum. We, hang on, I do need my notes.

ALAN LEE:

So, with the Sector Reporting Portal it's a… we will… I will run through the slides for you, to show you what the sector reporting looks like. What you can expect to do on it. What, sort of, reports you might be able to pull up from it as well. Without talking too, I'll much jump straight to the juicy bits, which I know that's what you guys are here for, to see what it actually looks like.

ALAN LEE:

So with the Sector Reporting Portal, there will… there is a new website. We will send out details of your logins, the web details, as well, so you can send it to your IT department to make sure that it is a… excluded site from the exclusion list, or whatever IT does nowadays. We have had complicated arrangements with them, to get it going from our end, because, you know, we've got a fairly secure site to the DPC. So with the Sector Reporting Portal you get a new login, usernames, passwords. It's a secure site so you don't have to worry about your data being leaked outside.

ALAN LEE:

When you login, the first thing that you will notice is that there is no more little tick boxes for you to click on to accept, to acknowledge that this is same CEO, CFO and so on. Which I gather is a bit of a win for agencies. I see some nodding, a lot of people nodding in the room. What we have instead is the contact details on the side here, on the right-hand side. Alan Barrett mentioned earlier on that this Sector Reporting Portal is integrated with our existing systems. The contact details for the… the executive positions…is drawn up from this integrated system.

ALAN LEE:

So when there is a new CEO that's been put in place, or a new CFO, all the information will get drawn from the other system and put in here directly. So when you login, if you notice something that is wrong, then you just have to email us. Otherwise, there is nothing to tick through anymore. You will notice as well, the um, the message on the front, here, is the same as what we have been putting in WACA for these many years. There is no intention to change it, yet. But, we are open to suggestions, if you want a joke of the day, or joke of the quarter, sort of thing, we can put one in there too.

ALAN LEE:

Page 6 of 16

The navigation bar has moved from the top, where you had in WACA, to the left-hand side. You will notice that there is only four, you might not be able to see from the back of the room, but there's a home page, data management page, user guide and reports. I'll run through each one of those later on. The… With the home… with… Sorry, just going back to the login page. This login page, here, we are exploring other options, where we might be able to put drew down reports… drew down cubes and business intelligence tools and that, on the front page, so that you can direct your managers, directors, whoever who wants to play around with data a little bit, to go here. That's a future plan.

ALAN LEE:

We are planning to put more report... Some statistics down the front, here, as well. So, not just, what file did you load last quarter and in the previous quarters. But rather, we might have a few subjects like FTE, over time over the last five to ten years...those sort of things. The slides that you see here, with the Sector Reporting… Sector Reporting Portal, is a near complete version of its first… I guess, first iteration. We… due to the short timeframes that we have been given, we have been putting together what works and what we know will cover what we need to do. We will then look at taking a step further to make it a little bit fancier.

ALAN LEE:

Going on to the data management page, this is where most of the action happens. The data… data management page, here, has got very familiar things. It's quite similar to what you would do in WACA at the moment. You know, when you going into WACA, you would login, then import data, run the validations, it gives you summary tables and then you can export the file. With the Sector Reporting Portal, sorry, I should go on a little bit about that. After you… When you load data into WACA, you run some validations and then you press the finalise button. Whereas, we then, the PSC team would download the data, run it through a secondary QA process and get back to you via email.

ALAN LEE:

So, all of you who have received emails from us, we just want to thank you again, for responding and not just ignoring us, even though we have been emailing you over and over again. With the Sector Reporting Portal, we have just integrated those two parts together, so not just WACA, but also the QA process. We have put both into a single page. The data management page, here, we start off by selecting the quarter, which we are reporting on. Now you can load data in there, you can also look at data from the previous quarters as well.

ALAN LEE:

At the moment in WACA you cannot do that, so you need to load the old data back in. Whereas in the Sector Reporting Portal it stores all the information in there and you can go back and look at it if you want to. On the left… on the top, right here, that's similar to the summary table which you currently get in WACA. We’ve got your FTE, your headcount, separations, things which gets calculated in WACA through the data. Here we've got the summary… The list of errors and

Page 7 of 16

warnings which might appear.. I’ll take you through… I'll just quickly take you to the loading bit, first. So, you can… it gives you a bit more context.

Page 8 of 16

ALAN LEE:

So, to load the data in, we click on the different quarter and select the quarter you want to load. For this… for the purpose of this morning we will use June. As you can see, it's very familiar, it just pops up what, you know, asking you to load a file. Load the file, and process it, it runs through. We have tested this with small agencies, we have tested with Education and Health as well. For Education and Health it takes probably about two minutes, three minutes to load through to the whole thing.

ALAN LEE:

So, for small agencies it might take a couple of... few seconds to run through. Once the… once the data is loaded and then validated… validation has been run, it will give you a list of things which, through the validation, that it's found. On the left-hand side, on the left section here, that's the number of errors. So, things that… that I know, things that don't fit in the particular lists of codes, for example… for example, gender. Gender, if you put the code you currently set as M, F and X. If you put anything else, like P or U, or something, that's where the error will appear.

ALAN LEE:

So, the left section, here, is about codes which don't fit into that defined list. The middle section, here, that's validations based on ranges. So whether it's in the warning acceptable range or the error… out of the acceptable range. So, these two sections, here, are not any different from what you currently get at the moment. Just that it's an expanded table. OK?

ALAN LEE:

On the right-hand side, here, that's where it might be slightly new to… to some of you. On the right-hand side, here, are things that we currently do through our secondary QA tool that we take offline. And after we process it and write back in the email. So, this here is a summary of what would be in an email that we write back to agencies. It's… again, it's the same checks that we do with the QA tool, it's not any different, it's not any more than what we do, so there is nothing for you guys to worry about.

ALAN LEE:

I'll take you guys through the tabs at the top, here. We've got the multiple tabs, each one of them, has got a particular check in there. The first tab here is a comment… comments tab. With the comments tab we… we've included the comments tab, so a you can add your own comments, your explanation of why particular things happen to the data. In a way, for you to… to record… Sorry, for future reference. Remember earlier on I said you can go back to previous quarters, when you're doing your checks you will find it really helpful when you look back on what was reported last quarter, last year, and find that explanation for it.

ALAN LEE:

We've…we've got, for the lack of a better word, complaints from agencies, saying that we keep asking the same thing over and over again. And we acknowledge that we do that sometimes,

Page 9 of 16

because we… We don't remember the explanation that happened before. So, we thought with this comment tab, you can explain everything, you know, write this whole story in there and it's all there for you…. In the review… in the review data tab, this is where you can see your entire data set that you've loaded into the Sector Reporting Portal. Um, obviously I cannot scroll in this thing but you get the idea, you know, it’s a big window.

ALAN LEE:

On the left-hand side you've got number of errors and number of warnings. This would then indicate to you which rows have got errors and warnings. There are filter functions on the side, search functions so you can filter it out. So, I'm just going to zoom in here a little bit. With the review data tab, we have also created… help you guys easily to identify errors and warnings by highlighting them in a different colour. It just makes it really easy, so you know when you scroll through to see, right, there is a problem with this field and this is something we need to address.

ALAN LEE:

So, for example, here the fields that you see, it's because they don't fit a particular set of… list of codes. And the reason… one of the other reasons why we have highlighted that for you is because in the Sector Reporting Portal, you can actually add the data in there, so there is no need for you to pull up an extra file or extra spreadsheet and then… and then make changes, saving it, up loading it again in the right format and that sort of stuff. It's a bit of a bugbear for some agencies, I see.

ALAN LEE:

So, for example here, we've got… red ones are errors, yellow ones are warnings. So, taking this bit here for example where the Ordinary Time Hours is 112, that's in a fortnight, that's usually 75 for a full-time person. If it's an error, if something that you want to change, you don't get to change only those in errors, you can change everything else as well. But, to change it, you just double-click on it, type in the correct, whatever you want in there, and then you click out of the box. It saves it, it validates the data, as well, when you um, when you're done with it and it runs through the whole validation to make sure that the data you have inputted is correct.

ALAN LEE:

So we found that this… Through talking to a few agencies, large and small, we found that this has worked really well for small agencies... small, medium size agencies. Some large agencies, as well, that don't have a lot of errors and warnings in there. For larger, very large agencies like, you know, Education and Health, this facility is still there for them to use, although we might need to come up with a different way to… to handle that.

ALAN LEE:

So, again, the idea here is that we want to make this as easy as possible for agencies to change the data, to make those fixes, because we understand that at times it's um, that data entry that comes up from the system isn’t necessarily clean … um … isn't necessarily correct. And to go back and make those manual changes in there can be a pain, sometimes.

Page 10 of 16

ALAN LEE:

So, moving on to the... to the tabs on top, here. All the other tabs from here on in is us… QA's that we do offline and then we write it back to you in an email. We have intentionally created tables, what we call tables, in here, or grids in here, to look exactly the same as what you get back in an email. So, imagine everything in again. Imagine your email compressed and put into this Sector Reporting Portal.

ALAN LEE:

Looking at the ANZSCO Compare tab, I'm not going to go through in much detail, such just bear with me, I just want to show you how it’s set up. We've got your employee IDs, job numbers, it looks at the current data for your job title, classification, ANZSCO codes and ANZSCO titles, which you currently get in the email. It compares it against what was reported in a previous quarter, again, what you get in the email that we send back to you. We have also highlighted them in a different colour to draw your attention to those things that need to be looked at.

ALAN LEE:

So just going back to this bit here, that are the tabs that we are talking about here, have all come from the right hand section, where there are items which we suggest you review. It’s not necessarily saying that it's a wrong code or not necessarily saying that you have put something fault in there, it's just something you should notice, it might not be correct or something that just needs to be reviewed.

ALAN LEE:

Keeping that in mind, when you look at ANZSCO codes, you know, if you look at things like this, where you've got a Project Officer that has changed, the ANZSCO has changed, but it's still reasonable, we will accept it. We're not saying that everything there needs to be a Pass or a Zero. Which is again, the same as what we do in um, in our communication emails. When you tell us to leave it, as a particular code, we will accept it and leave it as it is.

ALAN LEE:

So, again, no extra burden on agencies, no extra requirements for you guys to make those changes. So, just like the ANZSCO compare tabs, you've got, you know, all the other tables in there, things like Appointment Type ‘O’, Contract End Dates, where there might be some missing contract end dates, Contracted Hours, data which has things which don't necessarily change very often, but have changed. Again, I don't know why … I am picking on gender here, but you know things where gender changes from quarter to quarter, there's usually something wrong with the data, not anything else.

ALAN LEE:

So, here we have got things like management tiers as well for you to review to make sure that the tier ones, twos, and threes are correct. It would help, we try to make it easy as possible by identifying and highlighting them in a different colour. So, once you have gone through and

Page 11 of 16

check through all of them, made whatever changes you need to, run the validation again, you get a new summary table, or an updated one. Again, it's… it's not necessary for everything on the right-hand side here, the right section side here to be Zero's and Passes. If you're happy with the data, we are happy with the data, and then you finalise the data.

ALAN LEE:

When you click finalise, we get a notification saying that, you know, "Agency ABC has finalised the data." And we will, for the first couple of quarters at least, we will be help reviewing the data as well, as we currently do but the intention is to trust agencies fully and say that agencies know what they are talking about, with data, which you guys do. So, when we compress or when we… when we did this, when we built this Sector Reporting Portal, we wanted to make it as easy as possible for agencies, make it um, reduce wait times, because at the moment, sometimes it takes us a week, maybe even two weeks to get back to you guys about what changes need to be done. And this, again, has an on-flow… flow-on effect on to your internal report and reporting requirements. This should eliminate all of that.

ALAN LEE:

So, that’s the data management page. Up here, when you go to use go to user guide, user guide is where you'll keep all our user guides. You've got data definitions, you've got the guide of how to use the Sector Reporting Portal, so, if you don't remember everything I just said, that's fine, it's all up there. We will all… we will not… Yeah, we will still be around to help you and guide you through this as you need, we're not going anywhere, anytime soon. Hopefully. So, you know, you've got… Just pick up the phone and we will help you through it. If you want to sit down and for us to go through with you, hold your hand and do that, then, you know, I think we can do that too.

ALAN LEE:

Under the report section, that's where again, very obvious, you get reports. The reports aren't fully developed yet, we're still working through that and the intention is to produce and to replicate all the reports that we currently provide in WACA, for you to be able to export. So, things like the agency summary report, which is a quick summary of the data, that will be made available. We will also make the quarterly entity profile available, so you don't have to wait till, you know, one, two months' time after you've submitted data to get the report.

ALAN LEE:

So, here, you click on the report, you get the actual report. I am not going to flick through this …because, you know, because it's agency data in there. You can export the file and then hand it on to you executive or whoever is interested, without having to wait for us. We have had questions as well when we did some testing with a few agencies. All the grids that you saw earlier on, so all these grids will be made exportable. So you have the whole … you can do it on Excel, if you wish to, and print it off and you know, use a pen and paper if you want to. We will make all these tables available for you instead of doing it on the Sector Reporting Portal if you feel more comfortable with that.

Page 12 of 16

ALAN LEE:

So, you know, in the Sector Reporting Portal, at this stage, that's all that there is. Just those two, three pages, four pages. We… the feedback we have gotten so far is that it's usable, it looks much better than you know, 1990s WACA look. We will try to continue and improve this website, this portal, so that it gives agencies as much feedback as possible and give you guys as much data and reports as possible. Where a particular agency might have a request for special customised reports, we can attempt to build that in there as well for you to download, after you have loaded the data.

ALAN LEE:

So again, … help… we want to help agencies to be able to extract the most out of the data they get, comparing a sector and also making things easy for your submission. I think that's the last slide. That's right, how are we doing for time? Oh, we're doing very well for time. We've intentionally kept it fairly short, this presentation, so that we, you know leave more time for questions. We can also, you know… A lot of you guys have communicated to us via emails and phone, but never actually met in person. So if you guys want to hang around after this, you can still meet the rest of the team and just smile and shake hands and think it's you again. Anyways, coming back to this, do you have any questions on the report? Yes Jeff?

ALAN LEE:

Just wondering, is there any capacity within this system to report on what changes have been made, so that we can then do an analysis. And um, sorry… I don't need a microphone. I was just wondering if there was any capacity to actually extract, after you've gone through and changed everything, a report that highlights what was changed, maybe if that could be stored historically as well.

ALAN LEE:

Yes, so, we are currently working with developers to build those reports. The intention is, as required, when you have done a submission you'll be able to run a report, which… there you go, actually it's really tiny, so you can't see at the moment. It's a change report, showing you what originally was and what it has been changed to. We found this was a suggestion that we received from a couple of agencies, because it makes it easy for them to then take the report and go to their um, other section of HR, I can't remember what it's called. Different people call it different things, some call it establishment, some call it something else, but you know what I mean.

ALAN LEE:

And so that they can do is make these changes to the database, to the HR system. That's the intention that we have at the moment and we're working through that, we are pushing hard for that we are trying to make that happen as fast as possible. Any other questions? Sorry just… can you just wait for the microphone? Because I think it's being recorded here.

Page 13 of 16

AUDIENCE:

(Inaudible).

ALAN LEE:

Yes, so, for those who didn't hear the question, can we… because we're using a different (inaudible) which landscapes CSV files or some sort of data to get the file. The data allows, I'm sorry, you'll be able to export the data and in a CSV format and I think it will make other formats available like standard Excel format, so that you can export the data and load it into whatever systems you have available. Any other questions? Surely there are more questions than that. OK, anyone.

AUDIENCE:

Are we able to… sorry are we able to see historical data that was uploaded by us through the WACA tool using the portal now?

ALAN LEE:

Yes, so yes, you will be able to see historical data, at this stage probably for the 20... what financial year is last year? 2015/2016 financial year, we'll load all the data up there and you will be able to download it as well.

AUDIENCE:

Thank you.

Page 14 of 16

AUDIENCE:

There's a sentence here that says, "We work with agencies with the intention to enable agencies to create their own customised reports.” Can you tell me what that means?

ALAN LEE:

OK, so with the customised reports, the reporting function, here, is… We'll create a set of templates, standard reports that we’ll get feedback from agencies to develop. So that you can run it on your own. We're exploring the option, we're pushing for the options to… for agencies to log in there, create your own template, saving it as a preset report, just for your agency to be able to download.

ALAN LEE:

Obviously I cannot show that to you now because we don't have those preset reports, those customised reports, but, yeah. So, if… Just on that point, with the reports that we intend to create, if any one of you have got suggestions of what sort of information you want to go in there, that is not already in there, or if you have any, for example Culture and the Arts might have a special report that they use to compare internally.

ALAN LEE:

You can make those template available to other agencies as well. Not necessarily because it's… we’ll take away Culture and The Arts on top, it's essentially the same information that's made available, because different agencies might use the same, sort of, there's only that much information in the data and if you can get that out in nice tables and reports I think it helps agencies. You have the option to use it or not use it. Any other questions?

ALAN LEE:

I have noticed that the… There is a comment here saying you do not need to provide comments for the FTE, is there any other agent… Is any other third party areas that are going to potentially use that information of the HRMOIR FTE.

ALAN LEE:

With… with the FTE explanation that agencies currently expect to put in, which is another bugbear, especially for small agencies, we don't currently use that… We don't currently use that in any of our reports. With the exception of Departments of Health and Education. And you are unlucky, you are one of them. So, with the explanation that came from… that stemmed from… that started back when they had FTE ceiling in place. I'm not sure if any of you are old enough to remember that, but the FTE ceiling was a very contentious point and they wanted to know, the Ministers wanted to know what the FT change was from the quarter to quarter and why that had changed. We have reduced that down to just the FTE explanation for Health and Education now because you guys are pretty big players.

Page 15 of 16

ALAN LEE:

Anymore questions? No? Really? OK, well, if any of you feel a little bit shy of speaking in a microphone, I know I am, just come and… We'll be hanging around so just talk to us, ask us questions. If you need more time to process it, pick up the phone, give us a call, send us an email, we will be here to answer your questions as best as possible.

ALAN LEE:

If you want to have a sitdown and actually play with the system to see what you can edit and what you can do in it, we can accommodate it. We're more than happy to have you guys come in as well. Or… Yeah. But essentially, the Sector Reporting Portal , we have tried to keep it as simple as possible. Keep it as same thing as what you currently get, just reduced all the wait times, as well. So, I hope that, sort of, you know, satisfies you guys. You weren't too excited, hoping for big shiny things to appear this morning. And this is enough. So, if there's nothing else, I'd like to thank you all for coming and we will hear from each other fairly shortly. Thank you.

Page 16 of 16