The CLASS team thanks everyone who took the time to complete our recent CLASS users’ survey. We had over 200 responses from Centres throughout Australia and the feedback that you provided was thoughtful and comprehensive. The team has analysed the data to identify key focus areas and priorities and has now developed a project plan that will address identified user needs. 

Some of the issues that you identified are “quick fixes” that the CLASS team is working on. Our ICT User Support Officers Reuben, James and Sam will be working on these fixes and advising Centres as they are addressed and resolved. 

Other issues will be covered by the update and development of FAQs and core training sessions that will be held during the year. 

CLASS News will be our main communication vehicle to document how we are responding to the issues you have raised.   

Issue: Functionality of email field in first Intake screen 

Many Centres commented in the CLASS survey on the issue of there not being an email field in the first Intake screen and the inconvenience this causes users. This issue has been logged for priority updating with our developer and should be resolved shortly. 

Email field will be added to first Intake Screen (above), providing users with a single entry point for client contact details on intake. 

To prevent the need for double entering data we are looking at how CLASS can complement case management tools. The survey showed the most widely used tool is Actionstep, and so we are piloting this project to transfer data from Actionstep to CLASS. 

We have completed the preliminary work of scoping the needs, and also completed the consultation with Centres using 
Actionstep on what data we will be importing – thank you to all the Centres that have responded. We selected data based on three factors:

• is the data required for CLASS to work?
• is data required for NPA/NLAP reporting?
• is the data crucial for sector advocacy?

We take the privacy of your clients seriously and we do oppose government attempts to gather personal data of your clients. To align with our privacy goals, we aim to collect no more data than required, but this does not reflect how much data Centres may wish to hold. 

We have created a set of test data covering all the potential data types for the data we will be importing. We are now working with the our partner CLASS developer to test the import and later to create mechanisms to securely accept data.  

Responses to our recent CLASS speed survey showed that some Centres are continuing to experience slow speeds and we are working to establish common factors both within CLASS and in the IT environments of those Centres that may be causing the issue.  

The CLASS team has set up a test kit that will be used to complete CLASS and settings diagnostics in real time at Centres to identify and address speed issues. The test kit is first being user-tested in two identified Centres in Sydney and will then be rolled out to other Centres reporting speed issues; testing will either be done by CLASS team staff or the kit with 'how tos' will be provided to Centres to complete the testing themselves. We are confident that this approach will address outstanding issues relating to speed.