The following case studies provide examples of the breadth and innovation of Strategic Partnerships, Analytics & Innovation’s partnerships across the Victorian public sector.
Supporting policies putting local jobs first
The Local Jobs First Policy supports small and medium sized Victorian businesses compete for government contracts. To help support the delivery of the Local Jobs First Policy, Strategic Partnerships, Analytics & Innovation partnered with the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions on the Policy Intelligence Engine. The partnership helped the team in the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions move from a manual, spreadsheet-based process to a simplified and streamlined solution for policy intelligence and insights. This helped to significantly reduce the time taken to produce six-monthly and annual reports.
The Policy Intelligence Engine is a consolidated data and analytics platform providing consistent and accurate information against the Local Jobs First Policy. Using automated data ingestion (bringing data in), data is then transformed and presented in a series of interactive dashboards. A data governance and quality framework was also implemented to securely enable the delivery of timely and accurate data, providing insights and improved transparency of policy administration.
Through an agile partnership between Strategic Partnerships, Analytics & Innovation and the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions, the team worked as a single team. This allowed them to work together to overcome challenges. By doing this, specialist skills were brought in not only to deliver the partnership, but also to help improve the understanding, confidence and capability of Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions staff. Strategic Partnerships, Analytics & Innovation provided the expertise for strong foundations in data governance, data sharing and data quality so that insights were easily and safely able to be shared with stakeholders to make better decisions based on data.
The solid foundations created in the Policy Intelligence Engine partnership enable future opportunities to gain more insights into the impacts of the Local Jobs First Policy. For example, further exploring the data to better understand the effects of the policy on particular industries.
Exploring data for stronger regions
One of the driving forces behind Victoria’s economic growth and prosperity is its regions. Each region has unique strengths, challenges and opportunities. As regions look to become more competitive in the global marketplace to support growth, they are looking to focus on their regional strengths. The Regional Economic Development Strategies identify strategic directions to help drive this growth.
The Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions partnered with Strategic Partnerships, Analytics & Innovation to help bring alive the data that sits behind each of the strategies. Through interactive dashboards for each regional partnership region, people can explore the data alongside the strategies and the supporting analysis. Each dashboard allows people in government, the community and businesses to more fully explore the data, helping them to work together to achieve stronger outcomes for their region.
The interactive dashboards help people to explore data by categories including demographics, socioeconomic, employment, industry, and land use and digital infrastructure. Helpful user guides and frequently asked questions resources support users to delve into the data through the dashboards, where they can then tailor programs and policies and make informed decisions to support regional communities to thrive. Data for each dashboard is regularly updated to ensure decisions are made based on current information.
To explore the strategies and the interactive dashboards, visit the Regional Economic Development Strategies website through Regional Development Victoria.
Early warning of public health risks
The ability for early detection of significant public health risks helps critical services better respond to emergencies as they emerge. To respond to this, the Department of Health partnered with Strategic Partnerships, Analytics & Innovation to develop SynSurv. SynSurv is a world-first near real-time system to evaluate data from hospital emergency departments and provide early warning of possible public health events.
SynSurv uses natural language processing of de-identified emergency department triage text using machine learning methods. This allows patterns to be identified in the text – patterns that are more complex than what a programmer could explicitly instruct a computer to look for. Information provided by medical experts was used to help the model learn to identify the ‘needles in the haystack’ leading to an early warning notification.
Given the complexity of the language of triage text, selecting the appropriate key words and the advanced analytical methods, SynSurv has only been possible with significant collaboration. This included with experts from analytics, linguistics, IT, clinical medicine, public health, and logistics. A successful trial of SynSurv has already been able to provide alerts for cases of thunderstorm asthma.
SynSurv was a finalist in the Emergency Management category of the Leadership in the Public Sector Awards through the Institute of Public Administration Australia Victoria.
Partner with us
We are always keen to explore future partnership opportunities. We are looking for possible partnerships that:
- have a clear public benefit
- help government access new capabilities or data
- manage all legal, ethical, privacy and human rights concerns
- have positive social, environmental or economic impacts.
If you’re a government department or agency looking to better explore and build your data capability, or after support to become a more data-driven organisation, please contact us on email data.insights@dpc.vic.gov.au.
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