About Placeright
Victoria’s Department of Health & Human Services is the State Government department responsible for health, ambulance services, families and children, youth affairs, public housing, disability, ageing, mental health and sport policy in the Australian state of Victoria. Formerly the Department of Health, Department of Human Services and Sports and Recreation Victoria, the department was reconstituted as a single unit on 1 January 2015. The department is responsible for developing and delivering policies, programs and services that support and enhance the wellbeing of all Victorians
Challenge
Due to the increasing scope of the Placeright (formerly known as viCPlace) project, DHHS Victoria wanted to migrate their existing solution to the cloud and ensure that ongoing development could be performed, accounting for potential growth of the platform. It was imperative that any cloud solution implemented be highly available and have disaster recovery features built in, so staff and end-users could continue to interact with the platform at all times. In addition, the solution also required that all data be stored securely within Australia.
In order to expand the platform into new regions, DHHS Victoria required a refresh of the “viCPlace” brand, renaming it into something that fit both the purpose and future growth of the platform.
Solution
Acurus was engaged to provide ongoing development to fix both existing identified bugs and the addition of new features. Furthermore, Acurus was also engaged to migrate the platform to the cloud and provide ongoing hosting, maintenance, monitoring and support. A full rebuild of web and database servers was also provisioned and deployed in the new cloud environment.
To ease the transition, Acurus engaged with DHHS Victoria in a design workshop to cover an immediate cutover from the incumbent provider. In addition, Acurus reviewed the code base to provide a Logical Data Model and Business Domain model to DHHS Victoria. Acurus engaged with DHHS Victoria using its standard project management process, ensuring full visibility of the cutover process, inclusive of engaging with the incumbent provider to drive requirements in terms of a test cutover and final cutover process.
Acurus also assisted with DHHS Victoria’s rebranding exercise for the “viCPlace” application, developing a new brand, logo, tagline, and style guide, culminating in the name Placeright. The new Placeright branding was integrated across the website and application itself.
Success
After the detailed project management approach, Acurus was able to cutover the Placeright portal from the incumbent provider to a highly available cloud platform in the agreed out-of-business-hours timeframe. In addition, during the first 90 days, Acurus supplied DHHS with significant knowledge about the platform and the current standing of its codebase.
The Acurus platform design also enabled the spooling up of additional infrastructure to support both business-as-usual requirements and any testing, QA or sandbox components in a no-impact manner. After the initial migration, the Acurus approach gave the department both transparency and visibility into the platform and development cycle.