Congratulations to Wayne Harvey, winner of the Best Technology Achievement by a First Nations Person
Congratulations to Wayne Harvey — the joint winner of the Best Technology Achievement by a First Nations Person, at the Connecting Up Australian Not-for-Profit Technology Awards!
As Systems and Information Manager at Community First Development, Wayne has developed a highly sophisticated technology platform that supports and guides all our work with First Nations’ communities.
Wayne has been recognised for his contribution to our organisation, to the non-profit sector, and to all the communities he’s supported through his work. We’re so very proud of you, Wayne.
“It provides real-time tools and frameworks that support our staff and volunteers working in partnership with communities. It enables us to tell the story about the richness and depth of our work with First Nations’ communities and records the evidence about the long-term impact of our work with communities,” Tom, General Manager Operations.
Wayne has created a database that helps capture the voice of our people. Our peoples’ voices are paramount to all we do to celebrate and share communities’ successes and achievements. Wayne has helped humanise our data by enabling us to tell people’s stories in a way that is tangible, meaningful, and real. These stories tell us a community’s journey to being self-determined as First Nation peoples,” Doyen, Regional Manager, Western Region.
“Wayne is an absolute genius! Building and maintaining a database that can be adapted to the ever-changing needs of a community development organisation is no easy task. Being able to access all the information you needed to manage and monitor projects in one easy search helped us focus more on community development work and getting to know communities than being stuck in the office doing admin,” Emily Lapinski, former Senior Community Development Officer.
More information can be found on the Connecting Up website here, including a full list of the winners.
We also invite you to hear more about what our staff members had to say about Wayne’s amazing achievements here.
About the technology platform, ‘D4’
D4 is the fourth version of the data base that holds the evidence base of our work. Prior to D4 we custom-built each version ourselves. We’ve been fortunate to have the capability to do this in-house through Wayne’s skills and expertise. The third version provided a major change in capability through integrating data capture with our then newly developed Community Development Framework, Story of Change and monitoring and evaluation techniques.
In 2019, we made the decision to take advantage of the greater capability, accessibility and security provided by cloud‑based digital solutions and upgrade the database. With the plethora of options available and the need to find a platform that would give us as much longevity and capability as possible, we made a decision to work with an external specialist. We engaged Towcha Technology, a First Nations’ technology specialist, to work with us on the project. After undertaking a research phase with Towcha Technology in early 2020, we moved to build the system utilising Microsoft Dynamics. The new system was then completed in a unique partnership between Wayne and the team at Towcha Technology.
The new cloud-based platform provides a quantum leap in IT capability and support for our team. The unique functionality of our technology support has been increasingly recognised externally. With that in mind, D4 is built with the potential for other organisations to access the system to support their own work. This year we have focused on staff training and bedding down and refining the new system. In future, we will explore its potential to provide the same support and enhanced capability to other organisations, both in Australia and internationally.