Social equity in remote Australia — starting with the tech

If you’ve ever spent any time with Brad and Erika, you’ve probably heard them use some favourite phrases to encompass the vision of HutSix and why we do what we do. Some of these include ‘ technology that changes a generation’ , or ‘ providing culturally appropriate technological solutions’ , and our favourite — ‘cutting IT Managers out of the decision making’ .

These phrases might sound a bit OTT, but they are true — we do believe that technology is one of the key ways to reduce the barrier to entry for vulnerable people into areas of society that have been restricted by gatekeepers.

But is it all talk? Have we just drunk our own Kool-Aid?

We primarily work with Indigenous-run organisations who operate within the health and wellbeing space — two dozen of them to be exact. Outside of this, we work with service providers to these organisations, often through means such as social work, youth work, youth diversion management, and housing.

We know remote life

These have been our key clients over the last 10 years of the organisation, and we’re going to continue our commitment to them for the next 10 years and more. The nature of our client base is primarily due to our own organisation’s remote nature. HutSix was founded in Alice Springs, and still has a sizable team in Alice. Brad and Erika also grew up in the Northern Territory, so we’re used to coping with the nuances of limited data, the promises of the NBN, and a limited talent pool to pull from.

For the first 10 years of the organisation (about 2010–2020), we would use our rural expertise when liaising with clients to develop systems that aligned with their organisational needs. This worked for us, and is something that we still do to this day.

Why the need for culturally appropriate software?

In 2020, and especially 2021, as the world was still in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the lack of new people migrating to Australia and to the Territory drastically impact organisations here — including ours. The Territory has always relied on people travelling through to help fill jobs for a year or so. Some of these people stay for a while, and some of them move on to other opportunities or go back to their families. But as migration to the Territory stopped, a variety of services were heavily impacted and couldn’t run to their full extent because of a lack of staff.

The Territory, however, does have a permanent population of people who stay within the state — our Indigenous people. Indigenous people make up 30% of the population, but 30% of our way of life does not align with their needs and values. Indigenous people have long experienced systematic racism that has resulted in major gaps in health, literacy and life expectancy that are experienced to this day.

The prerequisites to work in an organisation that provides outreach and support services to Indigenous people are actually quite different. You have the client facing component — acting on the front line, engaging with Indigenous people directly, speaking in language and preventing a crisis from occurring. Then you have the internal facing component, the reporting, data collection and organising that has to occur to meet funding and governance requirements. Both of these components are just as important as the other, however, combining them creates a barrier to entry for many Indigenous people.

English literacy is a major issue for Indigenous people, with 40% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders having minimal literacy, a figure that increases to 70% in remote areas. Whilst English literacy is quite low, there are a variety of languages that may be spoken by an Indigenous person. In Central Australia, we have at least eight languages that are spoken, and in South Australia, there are over 10 languages spoken. Even though English skills may be poor, the vast amount of knowledge that an Indigenous person may have, and the language skills that help to pass on that knowledge, cannot be passed over because of English literacy.

The barrier to entry from an administrative perspective often makes it too hard for an organisation to keep Indigenous people employed, despite the wealth of knowledge they have in other areas. So we decided to look at addressing this factor — does this complex work really need to be that complicated?

They call it Territory time for a reason — things seem to move a bit slower in the NT than what they do on the East Coast. It’s very commonplace for multi-million dollar projects to be managed through spreadsheets, emails and phone calls, for there to be weeks (or months) long delays on projects being completed because of the administrative overhead and spreadsheet exhaustion.

The disconnect between applying off the shelf systems to a bespoke problem, contributes to the need to have customised solutions to meet the exact needs of organisations and their staff. We’ve built complex systems that stand up to the test of ATO governance and compliance, that are 100% controlled by the input of iconography on the front end of the application. Our systems are built to withstand poor internet connectivity, drop out and internet speeds. They’re device proof — not native to any one particular device type, and can be used by anyone — no matter their tech or English literacy.

This sounds like a nirvana doesn’t it! A world where you no longer have to mess around with spreadsheets, where reporting can happen in real time, not just once a quarter, the admin part of these jobs can be condensed to just two minutes a day — instead of two weeks a month.

Why doesn’t everyone do it?

You might be thinking, ‘that sounds like a dream — and common sense! A reduced barrier to entry to getting (and keeping) a job, less pressure on the welfare system, role models for kids and improved self-esteem!’. So why isn’t this mandated in grant guidelines? Or governance? How can you truly ‘Close the Gap’ without creating social equity for Indigenous people in the tech space?

One of the biggest barriers that we see is IT managers themselves. We bring new ideas into an organisation that start to have people panic about where their job will go — will they be made redundant because of advances in technology? What happens to their livelihood? To that we say, you get to actually the part of your job you love! You can spend more time with your clientele, on the front line, and be proactive. Increased job satisfaction, understanding of the environment you work in, and the ability to be a part of a grander change in the community.

What about the IT infrastructure? Well, it really doesn’t need to exist. The introduction of complex systems to meet the needs of an organisation means we can get rid of things like Sharepoint and centralised servers that need to be accessed via a VPN. Thanks to things like AWS, server technicians are no longer required. It’s still important to have a strong SysAdmin team to manage cyber security, device access and general servicing, but as far as the core infrastructure that controls the organisation, it no longer needs to be sustained internally. The management of hardware could also be outsourced if you so desired.

It might seem a bit blue sky to say that having culturally appropriate software can help contribute to improving the lives of people, but it is super applicable on the ground level. Technology allows us to optimise processes, increase productivity and efficiencies in the day to day work that we do. Technology can help to break down barriers, and to create an environment of being proactive rather than reactive, and truly contributing to a positive change on the world around us.

Originally published at https://www.hutsix.com.au on December 2, 2021.