Joining forces for a safer community

In 2013, the bushfires that ripped through the Dunalley community and surrounds highlighted the challenges within Tasmania’s collective emergency response systems. There was no interconnectivity between agencies, resulting in inefficient means for incident knowledge sharing.  There was also an existing need to replace aging technologies in individual emergency service agencies.
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The solution was to introduce an Emergency Services Computer Aided Dispatch (ESCAD) system, enabling real-time sharing of incident details, resource locations, hazard warnings and status tracking across Tasmania’s Police, Fire, Ambulance and State Emergency Services.

This begun a transformative change to how these services operate and work together to respond to incidents; improving safety for first responders and the Tasmanian community. GSD worked side-by-side with emergency services teams for the duration of the project to ensure its successful implementation. A significant people and technology change was required; the agencies needed to design and adopt new business processes and systems, whilst continuing to deliver vital services to the community.

The GSD team started with our essential first step – we put people at the heart of our planning and information gathering. We hit the road, hopping into frontline responder vehicles and observing the dispatch centres to find out first-hand how the current system worked and the operational challenges being faced. 

Engaging with a range of people, from the front line to the most senior key decision-makers and business process owners, allowed the team to better define the problem and how to solve it with a people-first approach. 

First responders and dispatch operators were also engaged on the project team so they could help influence the design of both the business processes and the technical solution, see its benefits first-hand, and cooperatively develop ways of working together. This built a ground-up approach and support for the change, whilst developing a greater appreciation of the operational challenges and responsibilities across the various emergency services.  

Our project delivery experts supported the solution end-to-end, as well as building a new service delivery and support model to ensure the agencies’ IT and operations teams were empowered to continue to support the system moving forward.

Undertaking this change in a cross-agency environment where frontline staff and dispatchers work 24/7 shifts added complexity to the business transformation challenge, but the team embraced it.