DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

The past year has brought many challenges, including coming out of lockdown and heading back into the office, all while continuing to support our members and our values.

New Functionality

Throughout the year we finished a complete laptop refresh project, replacing the old desktop technology, to enable greater flexibility. We also began the process of placing computer docks on all desks to enable hot desking and the ability for visiting staff from interstate offices to have a complete workstation with monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

The Continuing Professional Development (CPD) tracker project is complete, and we envisage launching the product in the second quarter of 2023. This will give members a dashboard to alert them to their CPD status for the year. Its functionality also allows our members to produce a statement for submission to the relevant registration board.

We released a new product on our website to assist the public in locating architects. Titled, Find an Architect it allows you to search for A+ practice members, based on either location and/or name.

A membership category restructure was completed, reducing the complexity of the current list of categories to create a simplified structure, streamlining the join process for new members.

Future State

Teams calling will allow us to remove all the physical desk phones. Teams calling will also allow greater ability for staff when working from home and allow all areas of the business to communicate more collaboratively.

— We are investing in greater cyber security controls to protect the Institute’s systems and of course member data. We are in the process of commissioning a cyber security penetration test to investigate and report on areas of improvement.

Alignment to best practice cyber security frameworks such as the Australian Signals Directorate Essential Eight Framework will be a high priority.

Upgrading the boardroom and conference rooms in the Melbourne office to include hybrid video conferencing will enable greater functionality and flexibility in the use of these rooms.

Moving our Membership Engagement Management System to the cloud is being investigated, which will reduce the need for remote servers and enable staff to access the system more easily.