Client: UnitingCare Health (UCH). UCH is a large private acute care services provider. It is a business unit of UnitingCare Queensland (UCQ), and includes The Wesley and the Saint Andrews War Memorial hospitals in Brisbane and others in the Sunshine Coast and Hervey Bay.
Over the period of this Strategy, UCH planned to grow and be more successful in all its key performance measures. This included increasing the number of key partnerships and the mix of services it provides. It planned to do this while also increasing integration and leverage across its facilities and services, and working within UCQ on opportunities of common benefit.
Timeframe: 2010-2011
Description of Service
Development of a five-year Information Strategy for UCH that provided a plan for investment in ICT and related capability in support of the successful delivery of its corporate Business Plan.
The strategy’s development included significant consultation with UCH executives and managers, and the UCH CEO was the sponsor. This ensured the strategy aligned with expectations and requirements of the business, and was accepted as a commitment to UCH’s future.
This Strategy outlined the journey that UCH needs to undertake in order for it to:
- Improve and increase its ICT-related capability, update its ICT infrastructure, and implement high priority solutions to address serious and immediate shortcomings that impact the business’s performance and create risk; and
- Incrementally build an information environment (organisational and technical) that is able to sustainably support UCH’s ongoing ICT and related requirements.
Jeff Parker delivered this consultancy. He organised other consultants to provide specialist input, including John Thorp (author of The Information Paradox and acknowledged international authority on benefits realisation).
Outcomes
The Information Strategy report included the following key components:
- The Business Context and Direction
- Drivers, Priorities and Business Outcomes
- Guiding Business Principles for ICT
- Current Situation relating to ICT at UCH
- UCH’s Information Vision
- The Case for Increased Investment
- The High Level Target Environment
- The Framework for Delivery of the Strategy
- The Necessary Investment and Transition Plan.
The strategy laid out a five year schedule of initiatives that were costed for budget planning purposes. These were described in sufficient detail to provide an appreciation of the scope, purpose and deliverables of each initiative, and the benefits that UCH should expect to realise from them.