From both sides of the work order

Mandate

Make the housing record, contractor access and asset data dependable enough for the board to rely on, with tenant information held only for a stated purpose.

Outcomes

• Reduced contractor portal access from 46 tenant fields and 1,940 accounts to 11 fields and 1,180 accounts
• Notified 1,326 tenants and applicants after a 2023 mailbox compromise, telephoning 312 with safety flags first
• Resurveyed 8,412 of 8,640 homes, raising the ten-year maintenance forecast from A$186 million to A$238 million
• Extended multi-factor authentication to every staff and contractor account by 2022

Decisions in context

The chief information officer role was created when the board decided that technology risk deserved its own committee reporting line rather than a paragraph in the corporate services report. I sit on the executive team and lead four managers covering housing systems, infrastructure and security, data and asset information, and service delivery. Most of my decisions have been about restriction and evidence: who can open a tenant's record, how quickly we can tell people when something goes wrong, and whether a condition figure was observed or assumed. I have also had to refuse things colleagues wanted, including a predictive maintenance platform and an earlier finance-system replacement. I report quarterly to the Audit, Risk and Technology Committee and present our technology plan to the full board each year. I am not a director and attend board meetings only by invitation.

Reason for the move

Still in post; a single non-executive seat would sit beside this role, with Wynnorra's consent.

Mandate

Bring two organisations' tenancy, maintenance and finance records onto one set of systems without disrupting rent or repairs.

Outcomes

• Migrated 7,300 tenancy records and rent histories onto one housing system in 2016
• Replaced two maintenance systems with a single work-order platform and contractor portal
• Introduced the first records retention schedule covering tenancy and applicant files

Decisions in context

The merger joined a Townsville association with a long regional history and a Brisbane provider with stronger systems but weaker records discipline. My task was to make one organisation out of two data sets. We reconciled every rent account before migration, and I delayed the cutover by ten weeks when 340 arrears balances did not agree; the chief executive was unhappy, but a rent statement that changes overnight is a tenant's first evidence that a merger has gone wrong. I also launched the contractor portal in 2016. I gave the maintenance team forty-six tenant fields because they asked for them and the old paper process had shared even more. That was the wrong comparison, and I corrected it five years later. The period taught me that every migration decision is also a privacy decision, whether or not anyone labels it that way.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief information officer when the board created the role with a direct committee reporting line.

Mandate

Replace manual arrears, maintenance and reporting processes with dependable systems.

Outcomes

• Moved arrears management from eleven spreadsheets into system workflows covering 3,900 rent accounts
• Introduced after-hours maintenance routing to on-call contractors
• Led the technology workstream of the 2013–14 merger due diligence

Decisions in context

Calvenmoor had grown quickly through management transfers of state-owned homes and had kept pace by adding spreadsheets. Arrears were tracked in eleven of them, and two officers could hold different balances for the same tenant. I moved arrears into the tenancy system, with notices generated from it, and disputed balances at tribunal fell noticeably within a year. I also set up after-hours maintenance routing so that an urgent repair reached an on-call contractor without a staff member forwarding emails at midnight. In 2013 I led the technology workstream of merger due diligence with Marrabine, my first employer. I recommended keeping Calvenmoor's tenancy system but Marrabine's asset records, which were better maintained. During this period I completed a part-time graduate certificate in information security, which shaped the access rules I later applied across the merged organisation.

Reason for the move

The merger created Wynnorra and a general manager role covering both organisations' systems.

Mandate

Give technicians and subcontractors the work-order details they needed, and give clients evidence of completed work.

Outcomes

• Introduced mobile dispatch to 180 technicians, replacing faxed work orders
• Built a subcontractor portal used by about 300 firms
• Added before-and-after photographs to completion records for client audits

Decisions in context

At Sundercombe I saw housing providers from the contractor's side. Work orders arrived by fax, email and portal, often with whole tenant histories attached because sending everything was easier for the sender. My team built a mobile dispatch system for 180 technicians and a portal for about 300 subcontracting firms, and I learnt what tradespeople actually used: an address, access instructions, a telephone number and a warning when one was needed. Almost nothing else was read. I also learnt how contractors respond to clumsy controls. When one client demanded monthly password changes, our subcontractors wrote the passwords on their vans. Hamish Tulloch, our operations director, made me ride with crews for a fortnight before designing anything, which remains the most useful requirements work I have done. I left because I wanted to decide what left the landlord, not handle it afterwards.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work for a housing provider and decide what tenant information should leave the landlord in the first place.

Mandate

Implement tenancy software at housing providers and councils and migrate their records accurately.

Outcomes

• Implemented the software at fourteen housing organisations and councils
• Wrote the company's data-migration and reconciliation method
• Added a role-by-role access workshop to standard implementations

Decisions in context

Orrendale sold tenancy and property-management software to housing providers and councils, and I implemented it. Each project began with a client's old records, usually incomplete, and ended with a go-live that staff judged by whether rent balances were right on the first morning. I wrote the reconciliation method the company used for migrations, and from 2002 I led five consultants. The product shipped with every user able to open every tenant screen, and most clients kept that default. I added a workshop to our implementations in which each client decided which roles needed which screens. My manager thought it slowed projects, and he was right; it added about two weeks. Several clients still chose open access. The lesson I took was that a default setting is a decision someone has avoided making, and that vendors rarely make it on a client's behalf.

Reason for the move

Moved to a maintenance contractor to see how landlord records were used in the field.

Mandate

Manage a portfolio of tenancies, then maintain the association's tenancy records.

Outcomes

• Managed rent, inspections and arrears for about 160 tenancies
• Built the association's first tenancy database, replacing a card index
• Separated sensitive support correspondence from files shared with maintenance contractors

Decisions in context

I joined Marrabine because it needed a tenancy officer and Townsville did not need many graduates in information systems. I managed about 160 tenancies, collected rent, carried out inspections and appeared at the tribunal on arrears cases. Tenants told me a great deal, and the association kept all of it in one folder per household. In 1995 I realised that contractors collecting work orders from the same cabinet could read support letters and protection orders. I proposed separate folders for sensitive correspondence, and the housing manager agreed after some argument about the extra filing. In 1996 I built a database to replace the card index, and in 1997 the association made me its housing systems officer. Those five years gave me the tenant's side of every system I have designed since, and I still use them to test whether a proposed field is necessary.

Reason for the move

Moved to Brisbane to work in housing software.