Strategic Workplace Wellness

The importance of looking after employee’s mental health The wellbeing of employees, and particularly their mental health, has been put into the spotlight since the beginning of the pandemic. In fact, since many offices closed and remote work became the norm for some, it has become such a big issue that governments at all levels are investing millions of dollars to ensure that employees are looked after, whilst effects of lockdowns and workplace restrictions might take years to be fully realised. The focus is largely on managers – though available for all – because “a Deloitte survey found that 97% …

NDIA's Tips on sharing a Relatable Cyber Story

In an increasingly volatile cyber landscape, one of the biggest challenges facing security leaders is communicating risk and raising cyber awareness across an organisation. In order to increase resilience and maintain good cyber hygiene, it is necessary to convey the need for cyber securi…

Local Government & Municipalities Executive Sessions 2021

In a post-COVID world, most councils are working on a recovery strategy to survive, revive and thrive, with digital transformation at its core. Achieving whole-of-council digital transformation is a key challenge, as it is more than just technology implementation.

Reimagining Business Processes to Enable the Evolving Government

“The concept of eInvoicing is actually the digital exchange of invoice information between a buyer’s and a supplier’s accounting systems, with the eInvoice automatically showing up as a bill to be paid in the accounting software. This removes the need for manual data entry, making the whole process faster, more efficient, more accurate, and more secure.” While eInvoicing has been around for a while, there are two main drivers for the current push towards greater adoption of the practice. The first is to “create an open market that enables all businesses, especially small and medium enterprises, to participate in digital …

Using Technology to meet your Customer Needs

“To improve our customer service, we needed to make the customer experience frictionless and take the unnecessary contact out of the journey, we needed to understand our touchpoints, we needed to deliver 24/7 self-service solutions, we needed to have an unrelenting focus on continuous improvement and to embrace digital transformation, and we need to automate absolutely everything.” Jeffrey Griffith, Deputy General Manager, Devonport City Council Being on the front foot meant that Devonport looked at all their processes and decided to digitise. In terms of the touchpoints at Devonport council, “we have our reception, social media, telephone, email, and our …

Procurement and Contract Management for Councils

A transformative process was required because a number of challenges and opportunities were identified with regards to procurement and contract management. Previously, purchasing was done from a “tactical rather than a strategic framework.” Also, although there are commercial expectations, these are hard to enforce given that there are “very rigid government policies, acts and legislations as well as probity requirements.” There are also increasing “community expectations which can drive decision making, and the definition of value means different things to different branches,” especially for minority groups. At the same time, the council is committed to being sustainable and innovative, “so …

#GovInnovator Q&A: Deshard Stevens, CISO, NYC Commission on Human Rights

Deshard Stevens is a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) with over 12 years of experience managing, developing, and implementing business strategies and technical solutions while leading and managing project development, cloud strategy, and information technology teams. Deshard was the recipient of the 2018 Rising Star Award from the New York City Public Sector CIO Academy. He is certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified in Risk and Information System Control (CRISC), Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer (CDPSE), and holds a Master of Business Administration. In his free time, Deshard is an avid runner. I am currently the Chief Information …

Illuminating Tips on Risk Management

To illustrate the importance of cyber risk management, “let us to look at the fictional case study of a small business.” It might be fictional in that this particular business does not exist, but all the components of the case study are real and based in reality. The business is run by two entrepreneurs “who have a passion to move forward, producing beautiful and functional shoes.” They have been in business for a decade, with a “strong community of customers and they have wonderful relationships with their suppliers, their artists and producers.” As entrepreneurs, the two partners are always looking …