Background
The AISNSW began a range of projects as part of their Partnerships in Education Program which was developed to assist NSW independent schools with meeting the objectives of the Australian Government’s Students First agenda and the New South Wales Government’s Great Teaching, Inspired Learning initiative.
CMC formed a consulting partnership with the AISNSW to conduct independent Strategic Planning and ICT Reviews for their member schools as part of the program.
Business Challenge
The IT Strategic Reviews require tangible and actionable outcomes that empower school leadership through the implementation of relevant national standards, frameworks and charters. The reviews objectively assess each school’s performance and practices with the view to improving planning and ongoing monitoring.
CMC’s IT Strategic Reviews covered the following areas:
- ICT Strategy and Planning Alignment.
- Risk, Disaster Recovery and Data Integrity.
- Financial and Budget Management.
- ICT Infrastructure, Networks and Audio Visual.
- IT Team Management and Performance.
- School Strategies (Eg. student devices, cloud, content filtering).
- School Applications (Eg. SMS, LMS, Portal, CMS).
- ICT Integration and Professional Development.
- Governance, Compliance and Operational Risk.
- Software Licensing, Procurement, ICT 3rd Party Contracts & Suppliers.
- Communication Effectiveness.
- Help Desk and Maintenance.
Results
CMC successfully delivered over 100 ICT Strategies and follow on projects with and on behalf of the AISNSW. Each of these ICT Reviews provided a management report that identified key initiatives, considered industry benchmarks (where appropriate) and made recommendations in terms of “Actionable Advice” on how measurable improvements could be made. The focus of each review was tailored to suit the school’s individual needs or concerns.
CMC brought the skills, experience, breadth and depth of knowledge necessary to be able to effectively and pragmatically assess a school’s ICT capabilities and look for gaps where pedagogical requirements are not being serviced appropriately. We focused on improved ICT efficiency, reduced business risk and identifying initiatives that would prepare schools for the learning experience of the future.
In particular, these reviews included:
- Reviewing ICT operations to determine the effectiveness of the processes, organisational structure, communications and resources.
- Assessing the capability of ICT Teams to identify, implement and deliver outcomes against the ICT plan and business strategy.
- Identifying major risks that might possibly impact the delivery of ICT Strategic Plans.
- Identifying initiatives that enable the school to meet the pedagogical demands of the future, including an assessment of the viability of the BYOD program.
- Developing actionable recommendations to provide the clients and their ICT Teams with a clear direction and mandate to implement ICT Strategic Plans.
- Project managing the delivery of recommendations arising from the ICT Strategic Review including, such as system evaluation and selections, wireless and infrastructure reviews, etc.
- Development of an ICT Strategic Roadmap of initiatives and identification of any gaps that may exist in the alignment of the school’s business strategy with current ICT direction and initiatives.
Due to the confidential nature of these assignments the names of the schools cannot be mentioned here, however, references can be provided on request.
