Business Background:
The VIT is a Statutory Authority responsible for the registration of all 120,000 school teachers in Victoria (State, Catholic and Independent systems). Every year, all teachers in Victoria are legally required to submit a registration renewal application to enable them to continue teaching in the State.

Part of their application includes the submission of information (for example the number of hours of teaching, and any professional development undertaken each year), and a 5 Year criminal background check. There is also an annual registration fee for all Teachers.

Project Background:
The objective of the 5 month project was the analysis of current business processes and systems within the functions of Registration, Registration Compliance, Accreditation, and Professional Conduct, to make operational and systems improvements to support a more effective, efficient, robust and scalable service delivery.

Scope:
There were nearly 40 detailed business processes in the scope of the review, across 4 functional areas, and involving more than 30 permanent staff. Example processes included;
• Registration – Applications Handling, Assessment, Finalising Applications, Conditions, Refusal Appeals, Good Standing, Registration Committee & VIT Council Reviews.
• Compliance – School Auditing for Unregistered Practice, Registration Renewals, Register Maintenance, Annual Fees Card Management.
• Accreditation – Qualifications Assessment.
• Professional Conduct – File Management, Disciplinary Investigations, Indictable Offence Investigations, Disciplinary Council Reviews.

What we did:
• Mapped and analysed business processes,
• Developed process ‘critiques’ (policy, people, process and technology-related obstacle documentation, then an impact analysis against a set of compliance / ‘performance yardsticks’),
• Identified opportunities for process improvements – defined high level ‘solution themes’ to each process critique, classified into policy, people, process and technology types,
• Designed and agreed conceptual ‘To Be’ detailed process maps to deliver process improvements,
• In collaboration with IT, captured high level Business Requirements for IT systems supporting the future (‘To Be’) processes,
• Embarked on a Quick Wins campaign – a high proportion of all solutions identified were those that could each be completed within 2 weeks of commencement,
• Made recommendations for the Implementation phase of the Project, including a suitable change management structure and approach.

Benefits arising from this project:
A number of benefits have been derived from the project;

• To support the transition to digitisation, business processes have been more clearly defined, including clearer input and output requirements, defined processing scenarios, documented business rules, and roles & responsibilities of team members, and between teams,
• Streamlining and strengthening the process decision points in line with governing legislation and corporate policy,
• Restructuring the governance mechanisms to make optimum use of resources and simultaneously shortening cycle times,
• Action plans to further streamline the ways IT systems support the current processes, in particular extension of current self-service interfaces for applicants,
• Identification of skills development points within processes, to be addressed through on-the-floor peer-led training amongst small teams,
• Streamlining the communications policy to better leverage electronic channels when interacting with applicants