Project Overview

The City of Sydney needed to replace existing Risk Management systems to manage Risk activity and support compliance requirements. Additionally, the a need to build registers for Policy, Delegations, Conflict of Interest, Complaints, Allegations and Investigations, Lessons Management, and 3rd Party Insurance Claims to allow a centralized tool for management and executive reporting.

Organisation

City of Sydney

Team

Sponsor Director of Legal and Governance
Business Owner Manager of Risk and Governance
Business SMEs Risk Mgt Coordinator, Coordinator Governance, Governance Officers
Program Manager
Project Manager
Business Analyst
Change Manager

Representatives from other teams provided advice and assistance to the project over time including Information Services, Technology and Digital Services, Insurance and Claims, PMO, Marketing and Communications.

Project Brief

The project delivered a single tool, down from 7 separate tools, to manage Risk, Policy, and Compliance functions. This is achieved with registers that enable the recording, review, and approvals, managing controls, actions, and reporting as well as the ability to automate notifications and escalations for pending actions.

Executive reporting and dashboards are available through a simple interface with the ability to drill down to individual Departments, Units, or Sections.

Risk owners now can conduct inherent and residual risk assessments and this is reported against the City’s Risk appetite for immediate action.

The system maintains Risk records in a more consistent, transparent, and easy to analyze state so the City executive can make informed decisions.

The Risk and Governance Coordinators have Administrator access and can customize the tool and create bespoke reporting. They can provide 1st level of support and have an ongoing relationship with the vendor to enhance and fix defects.

Project Innovation/Need

The City had an out-of-support Risk management system that it had previously unsuccessfully attempted to replace. Additionally, the Governance and Compliance team had a disjointed series of SharePoint registers, spreadsheets, and documents to track policies, conflicts of interest, complaints, and investigations, and 3rd party insurance claims. The PMO did not have a central repository for Lessons Learned to link to their Project Risks.

The opportunity to centralize and link these registers in a single cloud-based solution with workflows, reporting, escalations, and delegations was seen as beneficial to consolidate the Risk and Governance team

Design Challenge

Detailed workshops were conducted to identify all areas of risk and potential risk to the City of Sydney. This enabled the project team to identify Risk profiles, mitigations, and concerns across the management level.

Risk training videos and communication were sent out to all staff to increase awareness and adopt the new Risk Management tool by the City.

Findings from these workshops enabled the Policy Authors, and Owners to effectively update and manage their policies to protect the City.

Future Impact

Previously users had limited access to the Risk tool and compliance registers and would submit via email to the coordinators to register risks, updates, or compliance issues. Currently, now users can submit their own Risks by using the provided training, conducting assessments, adding controls, and assigning actions to manage and reduce risk to mitigate the City's Risk profile.

There are also links on the City of Sydney's intranet for staff to be able to log and manage their own Conflicts of Interest, this can be actioned and reviewed by management with appropriate plans and timeframe set with reminders.

The 3rd Party Insurance claims team has been able to migrate all data from several spreadsheets and consolidate it into a single tool with the ability to track and manage payments.

All of the City of Sydney's policies are now managed from a central location. This enables them to be reviewed and updated online. Once any changes are approved they are published on the City's intranet and if necessary on the City of Sydney's public website.