Enabling collaborative governance: How a state housing authority modernised records management with Microsoft 365

Our client is an Australian state government authority that manages and enforces legislation relevant to agreements in the housing sector, ensuring compliance and fair practices.

Challenge

Our client aspired to establish a modern information environment, capitalising on Microsoft 365 services, notably Microsoft Teams, to consolidate and manage its critical corporate records. However, a significant portion of these records was still housed on an outdated network file share system. This antiquated infrastructure impeded collaborative efforts, leading to considerable challenges including widespread duplication, difficulties in document sharing and access, and an overall inability to harness the benefits of a dynamic collaborative workspace. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, like many organisations, our client rapidly adopted Microsoft Teams to enable remote work. This swift transition, driven by the urgent need for work-from-home capabilities, unfortunately lacked sufficient governance and structure. As a result, the usage of Microsoft Teams varied widely across the organisation, reflecting differing levels of knowledge, capability, and engagement with the platform.

Simultaneously, our client was leveraging SharePoint 2016 for the management of a substantial document repository, particularly for controlled documents. With the impending transition to SharePoint Online for the organisation’s intranet, our client faced the additional challenge of designing a controlled document solution that would seamlessly integrate with and support the envisioned modern intranet framework. This transition was critical to aligning their document management practices with the strategic vision for a more contemporary and efficient digital workplace.

Solution

A modern collaboration information architecture based on the Microsoft Modern Collaboration Architecture (MOCA) standard 2.0.

The MOCA addresses two key challenges: 

1. To help organisations drive digital culture change across the organisation enabled by good attention management practices.
2. To address the “What am I accomplishing?”, an evolution from the “which tool when?”
   question for the Microsoft 365 collaboration suite, demonstrating how all the different tools integrate to enable people to work differently across the organisation.

The MOCA v2.0 was utilised in the development of our client’s Modern Collaboration Information Architecture to support the positioning of Microsoft 365 services to improve collaboration in the individual and team focus areas.

The modern collaboration information architecture identified the foundation tools and applications required to support the management of corporate records.

These included:

• Microsoft Teams
• SharePoint Online
• OneDrive
• Term Store
• Content Gallery
• Doc ID Service
• Hub Sites

We also worked with our client to develop a Modern Collaboration Governance Plan.  The Governance Plan identified the roles, responsibilities, governance guidelines, guidance, and configuration for the ongoing management of the information environment.

Once the foundation architecture and governance plans were in place, we commenced the process of transitioning our client to work in the new modern collaboration environment.  We worked closely with our client to develop a detailed migration strategy whereby the organisation would transition to using the new modern collaboration environment via a series of migration waves.  Each wave was structured for transition utilising repeatable process with gateway stages as follows:

• Discover
• Design
• Build
• Train
• Migrate
• Support

This enabled our client to smoothly transition the entire organisation into the new modern collaboration environment without disruption to the business during the migration.  The business was able to continue normal business operation during the transition.

To support the ongoing use and governance of the modern collaboration environment we designed and built a provisioning application to automate the creation of Microsoft Teams workspaces.  Utilising a simple form, end users can request a new modern collaboration workspace to meet their business requirements, the workspace is provisioned automatically and appropriate controls for sharing, sensitivity, metadata and even hub association are executed during provisioning, thus removing the need for IT involvement, and ensuring that appropriate governance is applied.

When a new workspace is provisioned, the details of the workspace are captured in a SharePoint list and therefore making it easy for Information Management staff to access information relating to the collaboration environment without the need to have elevated privilege access to M365 administration portals.

Utilising SharePoint Online we designed and built a replacement-controlled document solution to replace the outdated SharePoint 2016 environment.  The new solution was structured to meet the future needs of the business and in particular to ensure a seamless integration with a new modern intranet.

Result

Our client has transitioned their workforce to a modern, collaborative way of working, using powerful features in Microsoft 365 to provide access to the information they need when they need it. The new modern information environment has allowed them to consolidate their most valuable information assets into a structured and governed system, in preparation for the implementation of a new EDRMS.

The design of workspaces, using Microsoft Teams, has enabled our client to customise the collaboration environment to meet the specific needs of the business, allowing business units to design their workspaces to suit their information management and collaboration requirements. This approach enabled our client to transition quickly to the modern information environment without disrupting the ongoing operation of the business.

A newly custom-developed automated provisioning process that enables users to self-serve the creation of MS Teams provides a seamless approach to creating new spaces for collaboration, making it easy for end users to work in the most appropriate environment. At the same time, it ensures that information is stored in the Microsoft 365 environment, where it is appropriately governed and managed.

Information is easily discoverable through the modern SharePoint Online search capability, making it simple for end users to find the information they need to do their work.

Our client’s most important content has also been migrated to a new, customised, controlled document solution built in SharePoint Online. This solution enables approval for published content and ensures that important business-critical information is accurate and up to date.