EVO LVE H O U S I N G A N N UA L R E P O RT 2 0 2 0 – 2 0 2 1
I M PR OVI NG O U R IT SYST E M S Evolve Housing’s IT team has been busy at work over the
Rent review is a biannual process that is carried out by
past financial year, improving our systems so that our
all community housing providers, and involves tenants
employees are better able to collaborate, work remotely,
updating information about their living and financial
and be confident in our cyber security processes.
circumstances so that the CHP can determine if their rent needs to be changed.
ROLLING OUT NEW CLOUD SYSTEMS We have successfully implemented Software as
Currently, this process is done manually by employees,
a Service, moving our enterprise resource planning
who have to calculate each tenant’s rent separately then
system Tech1 onto a cloud platform. This allows
print out a letter notifying them of the change (if any).
employees to use the system wherever they are. The rent review automation project aims to speed up Our organisation’s infrastructure was also moved to
this process, by creating a secure digital calculator
a cloud platform, using Infrastructure as a Service
that will allow CHP staff to export tenant information
platform Microsoft Azure. These cloud-based systems
in bulk batches for rent calculation.
can be considered as ‘elastic platforms’ — technology that can grow as our business grows, stretching to
This tool will save CHPs a significant amount of time and
meet any demands or changes required.
money and is the first project of its kind in the industry.
In the 2020–2021 financial year, we also completed the
While the project is being developed by Evolve Housing,
rollout of Office365, which allows greater collaboration
we have already had interest from other CHPs wishing
and communication across the organisation. This will
to access the calculator and hope to roll it out across
help our employees work together more effectively and
the whole industry when completed.
provide a better level of customer service to clients.
SECURITY FRAMEWORK Another project we have begun implementation of
We are undergoing the implementation of a new
is Disaster Recovery as a Service for our Enterprise
security
Resource Planning (ERP) system. This is a platform that
Management System (ISMS) Framework.
framework,
the
Information
Security
allows us to back up our organisation’s data every 10 minutes, allowing us to ensure business continuity and
This is aligned to ISO27001/NIST and the Australian
the ability to keep our important files and information
Security Centre (essentials 8) and will see us adopting
safe no matter what happens.
the same stringent security standards as the Australian government recommends.
RENT REVIEW AUTOMATION PROJECT
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During the year, Evolve Housing also created an
This project is estimated to take 2 years and will
automated online tool that can calculate a tenant’s
involve implementing 48 separate policies across
weekly rent faster and more efficiently.
the organisation. Policies include annual awareness
