The Bushfires Royal Commission Taskforce (BRCT) team was established to support the Department of Sustainability and Environment in providing information to the Bushfires Royal Commission.

Parisfirst was retained to analyse the BRCT’s need to manage documentation surrounding Victorian Bushfires for the Royal Commission and for future bushfire-related legal processes, as well as provide advice on managing documentation relating to broader non-bushfire-related legal matters in which DSE might become involved. A key issue was the handover of management of the documentation from the BRCT team to the DSE Legal group.

Parisfirst analysed and documented DSE’s requirements around managing its documentation, addressing functional, interface, operational, data, security and performance requirements. An important factor was the opportunity to align with existing systems and to identify options to integrate with other pilot and proposed applications, including Microsoft SharePoint.

Parisfirst consultants also investigated the existing tool and outsourced infrastructure to better understand its fit to requirements and where there were gaps.

Identifying and analysing these requirements involved consultation with diverse groups within DSE and other agencies as well as outside the Victorian Government, and also developing an understanding of the court and Royal Commission specialist terms and procedures.

Additionally, Parisfirst identified measures to improve document handling processes and raised opportunities to future-proof operational documentation to support future discovery needs.

Following the requirements analysis and a review of the available systems, twelve recommendations were developed. Five of these were operational, forming a road map of specific tasks required, and seven were strategic.