Week 119

Here in Canberra, it’s school holidays, so this week quite a few of the team have been away on well-earned breaks.

Our Registrations and Approvals team are starting work on transforming the last of the four EX26 paper forms left, the EX26d. The EX26d is used for establishments preparing plant products, like horticulture and grain, and it covers a really wide range of circumstances - have a read of the form for yourself (pdf, 480kb).

It’s also quite unique: currently, you need to attach it to an existing form when you register or change the details of an establishment. We could replicate this approach and built it as a separate transaction, but the user experience of completing two forms would be pretty clunky.

Instead, we are going to redesign the existing transaction to build it right there into the flow for plant exporters. Our goal is to ship this for new registrations this quarter, and then take on the process for existing establishments next quarter.

We had a great kick off with the Rules and Requirements team this week. We are starting a discovery into the different places that the rules and requirements for export are published. This involves looking at the experiences of export businesses, but also the experience of our staff who approve permits - and need to check whether the rules have been met.

We will also be doing a technical assessment of the current version of the Manual of Importing Country Requirements (Micor), which currently sits on an externally-facing SharePoint site, and consider our technology options for the future.

Our friends in the Trade Reform Division are recruiting for the Future Traceability Hub. If you’re interested in working on the data standards and credentials for our future supply chains, there’s a role open until Wednesday 27 July. A great EL1 opportunity with some lovely people, including Jo and Jasveer.

It’s always great to see more people in government write week notes. Clare from the Australian Public Service Academy published week notes for the first time this week, including some good podcast recommendations - worth a read.

I finished reading Heading South by Tim Richards. I started reading it on the flight home from England in April. It’s a lovely jaunt around the railways of Australia, starting in north Queensland and finishing all the way over in Bunbury, WA.

Jess and I went to Sydney for the weekend. I went to the SCG and watched England trounce the Wallabies - brilliant stuff. 🏉