BucketOrange Magazine http://bucketorange.com.au Law For All Tue, 04 Jul 2017 06:14:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 http://bucketorange.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cropped-11162059_848435651860568_6898301859744567521_o-32x32.jpg BucketOrange Magazine http://bucketorange.com.au 32 32 249117990 Coding For Justice: New Initiative Supports Victorian Women In Tech http://bucketorange.com.au/victoria-women-in-tech-program/ http://bucketorange.com.au/victoria-women-in-tech-program/#respond Tue, 04 Jul 2017 06:12:34 +0000 http://bucketorange.com.au/?p=6469

Code for Victoria II – Women in Tech matches talented female coders and designers with Victorian Government departments, to apply skills to specific public sector digital challenges.

The new program follows on from the success of Code for Victoria’s Innovation Challenge – a collaboration between Code for Australia and the Victorian Government’s Public Sector Innovation Fund – which developed new tools for Victoria Legal Aid, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and the Department of Treasury and Finance.

The Code for Victoria II – Women in Tech Program will ensure the brightest and best women coders and technologists get their chance to work alongside our public servants to improve government services.” – Gavin Jennings MLC, Special Minister of State

The all-female teams of technologists from Code for Australia will tackle the following projects:

  • Dispute Settlement Centre of Victoria. The project will help clients understand their rights, match disputes to appropriate support and to solve disputes themselves
  • Corrections Victoria. The project will improve offenders’ access to information, support, education and rehabilitation tools to assist them to successfully complete Community Correction Orders
  • Department of Health and Human Services. The project will harness technology to improve communication channels for clients requiring housing assistance.

The Victorian Government has partnered with Code for Australia as part of a broad push to build capability across the public service. The program embeds designers, programmers and user-experience experts within government departments for six months to showcase their skills, while helping find new ways to improve services.

The all-female focus of the 2017 Code for Victoria program responds to the challenges associated with the Victorian tech landscape where only 20 percent of current tech workers are women, compared to 46 percent of the broader Victorian workforce.

Code for Australia is a non-profit organisation launched in 2015 that is working to change the way civic technology is designed and created.

Further Information

To find out more about the government’s Public Sector Innovation Fund click here.

To learn more about the Code for Victoria Innovation Challenge click here.

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]]> http://bucketorange.com.au/victoria-women-in-tech-program/feed/ 0 6469 New Online Tool Streamlines Access To Legal Help For Victorians http://bucketorange.com.au/online-tool-streamlines-legal-help/ http://bucketorange.com.au/online-tool-streamlines-legal-help/#respond Wed, 22 Feb 2017 00:43:09 +0000 http://bucketorange.com.au/?p=4983 Code for Australia and Victoria Legal Aid launch new online checker.

Code for Australia (CfA) and Victoria Legal Aid (VLA) have just released a new online tool designed to make it easier for community members to gain access to legal assistance.

The new technology was developed through the Code for Victoria Innovation Challenge with the ultimate goal of increasing access to justice through streamlined processes that better match people with the right legal services. The new online checker is expected to reduce pressure and save Victoria Legal Aid’s Legal help team up to 30 hours in phone calls per week.

How does it work?

The online checker aims to help people who have legal problems that are considered ‘out of scope’ for VLA by referring Victorians to the relevant body or organisation. In the past, VLA’s Legal Help lawyers could spend up to 5 minutes with each caller who had an issue that was not appropriate for the VLA team to deal with.

The online checker not only provides an alternative mechanism for this cohort to access help by answering a series of online questions but also significantly reduces wait times for those who have a legal problem that VLA are able to help with.

The CfA team have used coding from the gov.uk Legal Aid Checker, run by Government Digital Services, UK, as a starting point and refined the tool to fit Australian needs.

Victoria Legal Aid Managing Director, Bevan Warner, says the new, fresh user-centred design prototype has great potential:

Learning from, and working with, the fellows has brought a dynamic perspective to Victoria Legal Aid, building our capacity to use design thinking, rapid prototyping and co-design. I am looking forward to seeing this prototype develop and also looking forward to seeing how Victoria Legal Aid can continue to grow and explore in applying user-centred design principles.”

Further Information

All code published by the CfA team is open source, meaning it can be replicated in other organisations who have similar needs. The code can be found on Github.

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