The Department of Health and Human Services came into existence after the merging of two separate and distinct government health departments. It was vital to the success of the fledgling department that a more effective Intranet be created to ensure a smooth transition and minimise impact on workflows.

Parisfirst supported development of the high level requirements by documenting:

• The advantages, disadvantages and issues of the existing Intranets
• The business objectives for the Intranet Redevelopment project
• The defined and measurable success criteria and KPIs for the project
• The initial risks for the project
• Any initial issues for the project that needed to be resolved straight away.

Once the scope was clearly defined, we took a research driven approach to the high level requirements that began with an analysis of data collated by the individual departments.

This was then augmented by Parisfirst’s own research, which entailed:

• Six specialist interviews with key Intranet stakeholders
• A workshop with representatives of the DHHS Intranet Redevelopment Project Steering Committee to identify key business objectives, success criteria and risks
• A staff online survey to identify how staff use the current DHS and Health Intranets and the top 5 potential features they consider useful in a new Intranet
• Circulation of a discussion paper of draft report circulated to DHHS Intranet Redevelopment Project Steering Committee for comment
• Collation of comments and feedback workshop with the DHHS Intranet Redevelopment Project Steering Committee to make final decisions regarding draft requirements.

This process culminated in the development of a final set of requirements for the Department of Health and Human Services Intranet that provided a solid foundation for the development of a successful and streamlined Intranet experience.