Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority – Document Management

In managing the Reef, the GBRMPA works with several stakeholders including the Traditional Owners, other government agencies (QLD & Australia wide), community organisations and individuals.

GBRMP has three main branches: Corporate Services, Reef Protection and Strategic Policy & Partnerships. The head office is in Townsville with other regional offices in Brisbane, Cairns, Yeppoon and Canberra.

With no document management system or processes in place, staff at GBRMPA were struggling with a number of challenges including difficulty finding and accessing documents, confusion around multiple document versions, poor security due to no configured permissions, no streamlined process for document approval and a lack of consistency due to no document templates. GBRMPA needed a document management solution that could support hybrid work, make document versioning easy and ensure that appropriate access is granted in a timely manner. The business also needed a system to track and manage key documents from creation, editing and publishing through to retirement.

WebVine hosted a series of workshops with the GBRMPA team to uncover key insights, which were used to shape the framework for their Document Management Solution. Powering this solution was SharePoint technology, leveraging GBRMPA’s existing Microsoft licensing and delivering a secure, centralised document hub, accessible from anywhere.

WebVine created a home page experience making it easy to navigate and find documents via a rich search experience.

For version control, WebVine considered version types (major or minor), auto-versioning, the ability to comment, check ins and SharePoint versus business versioning. WebVine provided guidance to the GBRMPA team to update existing documents and migrate them to a new SharePoint document hub. A new automated workflow for the review, approval and publication of documents was created using Microsoft Power Automate.

GBRMPA now have a comprehensive SharePoint document management solution. Documents are easy to locate, update and share. Their SharePoint document hub is easily and securely accessible from any location. No longer are there concerns around access to confidential or sensitive information, with permission levels set up across the organisation.

Version history gives employees access to past changes, creating a useful trail for previous document versions. With a clear mandate for governance moving forward, including the naming and tagging of documents, GBRMPA are well prepared for the management of any existing and new documents. GBRMPA are now empowered with better technology systems and processes to continue their incredible and critical work in protecting one of the world’s most important reefs.