Week 96

It’s been a milestone week for us as the team released the first of our new export digital services.

• Our new Export Readiness service has been released as a private beta. By ‘private beta’, we mean a working product that we’ve released to an small cohort of users. For our first release, we’ve invited 6 users who run export establishments, which are premises where goods for export are produced.

  The private beta allows users to add and remove people who exercise ‘management and control’ of the establishment, rather than filling out and emailing us a 10-page paper form. We receive about 600 of these each year, which adds up to a considerable amount of time for our users and for our staff.

  Since the release of the beta on Wednesday, we’ve already had three of our beta participants try it and complete it successfully. This is also proving our behind-the-scenes processes, like how applications lodged through the digital service are able to be actioned by the people who normally process the paper form.

• The release this week wasn’t just about the private beta - the launch of the beta also marks a significant milestone for our teams ‘behind the curtain’. That includes the Export Profile team, who released their product for the first time this week, providing the account and profile backbone for the beta.

  It also includes our friends in the Information Services Division - who have been creating the ‘wholesale’ platforms for continuous integration, cloud infrastructure and single sign-on. For these, we have been the first cab-off-the-rank, and the needs of our services have been great test cases for how we operate.

• Adrian has been designing our first mission patch to mark the release. If you don’t know about mission patches, have a read of this lovely post by Vicky Teinaki. Naturally, we had a long discussion about what should go on the patch.

  In a meeting this week, one of our team described the release like an iceberg, with so much of the effort hidden below the water line. So an iceberg made complete sense for the mission patch. Adrian’s done a stellar job with it and I look forward to sharing it soon.

And whilst Sydney-bound for a while, here’s a photo from an early walk around Barangaroo on a foggy morning this week: