NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment

The challenge

The Environment, Energy and Science (EES) Group is part of the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. The EES Group brings together a range of functions including national park management, biodiversity and conservation, climate change, sustainability, resilience and adaptation, renewable energy and energy security, waste management and resource recovery, and environment protection and mine safety regulation. The work of the group is supported by centres of excellence in: science; policy and strategy; and data analytics and insights.

As a part of its services, EES administers a number of funding programs and initiatives as well as being the recipient of funding for specific projects.

EES manages a range of grant funding programs in excess of $120 million per year. These are a mix of competitive and non-competitive grants across various programs with the current processes being inconsistent across the different grant programs.

A number of limitations were identified in the current grant application, approval and management processes (and associated business systems) with these processes relying heavily on manual data entry and manual reporting processes. The ability to update, access and report on information was very constrained within the current business system and the extent and type of information able to be captured also limits the reporting capacity and sophistication that would be expected (i.e. spatial reporting). This presented a significant constraint in reporting on grant programs as well as day to day management of grant projects.

Furthermore, the current experience for applicants, grantees and other stakeholders was less than optimal as a result of inefficient information sharing which is done through spreadsheets, word documents and network drives. This translated into unnecessary duplication of effort by both external stakeholders and departmental staff.