Cue-X Case Study: Department of Defence
End User Computer ICT Transformation
Dan Marks was the Organisational Change Management lead for the Defence ICT Transformation Programme with the key responsibility for setting up and implementing the change programme. This included engagement to more than 6000 team members in the ICT group and engagement more widely to stakeholders across the Department of Defence.
Dan set up a team and developed the change plan for the agency which included wide face to face and virtual meetings across teams, branches, divisions and the group. It also included very wide engagement across the Groups & Services with facilitated workshops and engagements to capture feedback, present the changes and get their input into the programme.
Dan and the team set up all the communication channels including intranet pages, teams sites, video messages, weekly key messages for leaders, staff briefings and more to drive engagement and desire for the change.
There was a high level of engagement and excitement on the change that was tracked across key engagement metrics. Stakeholder engagement was a critical success factor for the program on getting engagement from leaders to own and drive the change. This was tracked in detail to understand their level of commitment and drive engagement activities to increase commitment levels.
A CRM tool was developed in Sharepoint to track and manage engagement which was updated daily and used as a tool with leadership to report and address engagement gaps and opportunities.
There was a significant level of measures in the change program across change maturity, stakeholder dashboards, engagement reports, heat maps, user journeys, lessons learned, benefits tracking and more.
ICT Transformation Programme
Dan Marks CUE-X Partner (previously part of the Accenture team) was the SI Organisational Change Management lead for the Defence End User Compute implementation which was a programme of 200+ ICT team members implementing the upgrade of Windows 10 across the Department of Defence.
This included leading the operational change, training, communication and engagement to more than 120000 users across Defence, industry and external partners. The change approach included detailed planning that covered awareness and engagement tools, communication materials, help guides, video telestrations, video tutorials, automated email communication, surveys, intranet, website development, brand development and much more.
The five year plus campaign included detailed engagement across Defence sites nationally with Dan leading the engagements and presentations at bases and sites alongside his team. This included managing training and leadership briefings and helping support the implementation and issues management.
Change delivery was measured across all activities including email open rates, user experience, service desk calls. There were also focus groups with users to understand communication effectiveness, preferences and usability of communication materials.
The change campaign has been used and replicated across ICT implementation programmes in Defence as a best practice model for engaging. The implementation was difficult with many technical challenges and impacts that effected operations. Dan had the ability, processes, relationships, tools and channels to quickly engage stakeholders and support the continued roll-out and implementation of the technology with the Accenture team.
Communication Capability Uplift
Working alongside the Corporate Communication team, Dan and his partner team developed the communication strategy and uplift plan to drive increased skills, capability, measures and tools across the CIOG Department of Defence communication and leadership teams.
Dan implemented a communication capability framework that helped measure communication delivery across the group and put in place a roadmap to drive capability uplift in the Corporate Communication team.
Dan worked side by side with the team for more than 12 months, developing all the tools, products, templates, measures and activities to create a standard that could be used and reapplied across the whole group. The standard was not only for the corporate communication team but for change and communication teams across the Group. This helped minimise the reinvention and waste of new products across the Group.
The uplift approach focussed on three phases of work including:
Development phase (phase 1): focussed on development of communication frameworks, strategies, tools and templates.
Upskilling and support phase (phase 2): focussed on supporting the Team implement the Corporate Communication strategy and plan through up-skilling activities and on-the-job training.
Sustainment phase (phase 3): focussed on sustaining the process and functions and extending the capability development across wider group Teams.
The capability assessment indicated a steady growth in the maturity level and skill capability of the corporate communication team with a current maturity level of three - defined. There was strong evidence of collaboration, improved processes and work practices across the team. Reputation of the team continued to grow with evidence of the team being seen as a trusted advisor for the Senior Leadership Team.
The Initiative focused on the delivery in an agile framework of sprints, outlined in the Capability Roadmap planned to uplift capability using the ‘Demonstrate, Work Beside and Hand Over’ approach to develop confidence and capability. The Capability Roadmap was successfully transitioned to the Corporate Communication team who were responsible for delivering the roadmap outcomes.
About CUE-X
CUE-X has a team of experienced consultants and contractors that work across many of the major federal government agencies. CUE-X specialises in the advice, delivery, management, recruitment, training and development of ICT programmes, voice of customer, customer data, business transformation, programme management and organisational change. Dan Marks is the Chief Executive Officer of CUE-X and has more than 20 years experience across government, Australian and global organisations. Dan is based in Canberra and works in government across major ICT program delivery. For more information go to www.cue-x.com
