Case study: Griffith University unlocks underutilised talent

Griffith University has tapped into underutilised talent across its campus through the introduction of its citizen developer program that enables students and staff alike to explore the world of IT.   

Michael Cooke, IT director for university operations at Griffith University, explained to Digital Nation how the program is building out automation that, so far, has led to about 12,000 hours of effort saved and removes the risk of human error.

“If we were serious about scaling automation at Griffith we could build a team, but it would never achieve its maximum benefit unless we could engage a much broader audience out there automating for themselves,” Cooke said.

“We not only needed to educate our people on how to automate for themselves, but we also needed to make them aware of the potential of these tools.”

Cooke said a citizen developer, someone with little to no experience in formal coding, IT or computer science could work across “any platform, any low-code, no-code platform, whether that's for automation or reporting”.

He said the public research university took a “two-pronged approach” with students offered “detailed work experience” as part of the Griffith Work Integrated Study Program and also citizen developer hackathons.

“For the students, like any IT department, we can offer them work experience across domains such as cyber, cloud and networking and we committed to also do the same for automation. 

“That's where students join our internal automation development teams for an intensive 12 weeks of learning on the job." 

Cooke said through this course, students can understand “what it truly takes to build some of these corporate automations, gather the requirements and review the manual processes.”

Productivity gains from organisations creating their own citizen developers and educating a workforce to self-help is huge, Cooke added. 

“Digital literacy is probably a better term for what we're trying to drive. But what we did with UiPath, they brought a programmatic approach for us to help scale this and do it repeatedly.”

Taking shape in the university's finance department, Cook explained the results have led to a reduction in hours spent on processes and lowered the risk of human error.

Cooke said one of the main projects is invoice matching, which is estimated to save the university around “2000 hours per annum” but also "removes the risk of human error that is inevitable in any repetitive manual process.” 

“Last year, we saved approximately 12,000 hours of effort," he said. 

"For us, it's not about saving FTE as it might be for a commercial or more corporate, it's removing that mundane task and work from our team so that they can be freed up and do high-value duties and tasks that add more value to the organisation.”

Cooke said staff and students are grateful for the time saved from their automation efforts.

“It's been enlightening because they can use these skills on many applications and they come up with some of the most amazing automations that save themselves time," Cooke said. 

“They're just so grateful for being removed from that minutia that we all take for granted in daily life and typical jobs. 

“We're a large complex organisation and hence there are many processes that are opportunities for both simplification and automation."  

Scaling up the program is still underway at the university with post-Covid training now back in person.     

“It's amazing for people to impart their knowledge to people who are just hungry to learn more and to be more effective and efficient in their roles,” Cooke said.