The digital transformation of an essential whole-of-government public service.
Introduction
Victorian Public Notices is the Victorian Government’s online platform for publishing statutory public notices.
When the Victorian Parliament passed legislation in March 2022 to enable the online publication of statutory public notices, it upended a long standing tradition of publishing public notices in newspapers.
In-line with the state government’s digital transformation, the rollout of the new Victorian Public Notices platform (VicPN) was accelerated, with a legislated launch date of July 31, 2022.
Following on from our successful implementation of the government’s community engagement platform, Engage Victoria, the government agency Digital Victoria (DV) looked to our SaaS engagement platform to deliver an adaptable enterprise platform in a tight 16-week turn-around.
Thanks to a collaborative co-design process between Doghouse and DV, we extended the capabilities of District Engage: enhancing content management, enterprise search, teams and workflows, and notifications - and met the deadline.
Complex stakeholder engagement across multiple layers of Government
The requirements of 20+ government departments consolidated into one platform
A bespoke team-based approval workflow to meet specific legal requirements for publishing notices
A 16-week window to design, build and deploy the new platform
Our Approach
Due to the tight deadline, it was decided to launch VicPN as a MVP. After conducting extensive technical and user discovery research with multiple government departments, we defined the MVP and the backlog of features for post go-live.
To guide the design and functionality of the platform we led a series of co-design sessions. Working hand-in-hand with DV, our Service Design, UX and technical experts developed key workflows and processes, and detailed a complex federated role and permission structure with individual requirements for government and business team types.
Key
Requirements
- Public profile creation with notifications system
- Ability for government departments and business to create accounts, manage teams, review and approve notices
- Business registration and ABN validation process with workflows to meet requirements of private enterprise
- Advanced search capability, with taxonomy and tagging to maximise search for public users
- A scalable superuser dashboard to meet the objectives of all Victorian Government departments
- A consistent admin dashboard across Government digital platforms to reduce administration and future development costs
- Implementation of the Victorian Government’s Ripple design system
- Reporting functionality to comply with Victoria’s Local Government Act 2020
Bespoke team workflows
Because statutory public notices are legal documents, they are required to undergo a strict approval process prior to publishing.
To meet this requirement for VicPN, we developed bespoke User and Team roles.
These carefully designed user roles include public users, authors, approvers, team admins, team supervisors, and super admins, each with particular permissions.
As a whole-of-government implementation, this secure team-based structure at the heart of the platform’s approval workflow illustrates how the VicPN platform can transform the way legislative functions are managed across government and business.
Benefits
The digitisation of Victorian Public Notices provides benefits for all users, including government and business enterprises. The platform has streamlined the creation and approval of notices, while the approval workflow has improved controls for business and government agencies.
At the same time, the platform has improved the accessibility and reach of statutory notices for public users, with a simple keyword search and the ability to view historical notices.
For the state government, the VicPN platform can be effortlessly rolled out across all levels of government, while offering a continual improvement of functionality for admins. The paperless system has reduced expenditure while addressing sustainability, while the implementation of the Ripple design system across the platform continues the seamless digital experience for visitors to all Victorian government websites.
- Reduced overheads
- Increased accessibility and reach
- Improved approval workflows
- Continual improvement
Looking Ahead
For us, the successful rollout of VicPN, and in particular the rapid deployment of a new platform based on the customised, extended framework of Engage Victoria, is very exciting. We’re now developing this modular approach to functionality, and incorporating these elements into our District Engage stand-alone product.
As part of our ongoing commitment to Engage Victoria and Vic PN, we are always looking to improve the functionality of these platforms. In the future, this may include the opportunity to integrate statutory public notices into public consultations, and vice versa, to provide a seamless process of information publishing and engagement across the whole of government.
Victorian Public Notices is a digital platform for the creation of essential statutory notices for Victorian business, governments and agencies.
By developing bespoke approval and team workflow tools, the platform streamlines the creation, approval and publication of notices, reduces the administrative burden, and improves access for public users. Ultimately, VicPN helps to foster a better-informed community, and improve democratic processes for all Victorians.
