The Public Trustee’s purpose is to “protect the wishes and interests of those we serve”.  This involves providing financial and administrative services to eligible South Australians, to help those that cannot manage their own affairs and those who have trusted the organisation to assist them.

The Public Trustee Strategic Plan for 2023-26 outlines that the core objectives of the organisation are to provide a positive customer experience, improve the way our services are delivered, ensure appropriate governance and financial sustainability and that the people delivering that service are supported. The continued focus has been on wellbeing, workforce planning, training, recognition and improving the customer experience.

The Public Advocate and the Public Trustee share a significant number of customers. They are people under both guardianship and administration orders made by the South Australian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and are some of the most vulnerable people in the South Australian community.

The Public Trustee has continued to work to strengthen relationships with key stakeholders including the Adult Safeguarding Unit (ASU), Office of the Public Advocate (OPA) and South Australian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (SACAT) by outlining service expectations, holding regular meetings and aligning processes to ensure good customer outcomes.

Understanding how the Public Trustee can improve its customer service delivery continues to be a key focus with the Public Trustee updating its Customer Experience Strategy and adopting a Customer Engagement Model.  These documents focus on our customers, keeping them informed, empowering our staff for first point resolution and progressing system improvements to enable a better customer experience.  In June 2023, the Public Trustee held an Advocacy Engagement Session to hear ideas, suggestions and feedback from key stakeholders on customer service initiatives.  Outcomes from this session include updating key documents to ensure that they are easily accessible by those with intellectual difficulties and those whose first language is not English.

The Public Trustee received funding in the November 2020 State Budget to replace the aged and unsupported PeopleSoft Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The replacement project commenced in May 2021, and the new system was successfully implemented in September 2022.

The Public Trustee has now commenced the process to replace the aged and unsupported PeopleSoft Customer Financial System. A procurement process for a replacement system was undertaken during 2022-23 and a contract was signed in September 2023. The implementation is expected to take up to around 18 months.

The operations of the Public Trustee have been improved in 2022-23 by:

• Engaging with the Disability Advocacy support network to provide ‘Easy Read’ documents designed to enable customers with intellectual disabilities to better understand key documentation.
• Commencing the process to enhance our corporate accounts payable function by preparing for the implementation of BASWARE and for utilising Shared Services SA to pay corporate accounts.
• Replacing our aged records management system for corporate records with a system called Objective. Objective will result in the move to electronic record keeping for corporate records and significantly reduce the need for paper based records.
• Successfully trialling ‘Teams’ phone technology to replace desktop phones. The technology improves accessibility and mobility for staff.
• Updating the Memorandum of Administrative Agreement with the Adult Safeguarding Unit to better reflect the interactions between the two departments.
• Delivering an enhanced induction process for new starters.
• Providing Mental Health Awareness training for all leaders.
• Refreshing the ICT server infrastructure at both the primary (Production) and secondary (Disaster Recovery) data centres.
• Upgrading the Unit Registry software (HiTrust) for the investment of funds. This will enable system generated reporting to the Australian Taxation Office.
• Trialling options to reduce the use of voicemail.  The new process ensures customers can speak to a person when they call, and leave a message rather than a voicemail if their officer is unavailable.   It also ensures customer phone requests are trackable and actioned.

Our 2022-23 Customer Satisfaction Survey showed that customer satisfaction has remained relatively stable from 2022 to 2023, with an increase in satisfaction for Estate Services and Trust Services, and a slight decline in satisfaction for Wills Services.

This is a positive outcome when considering the challenges the Public Trustee has faced over the last 12 months in terms of securing appropriate staff resources due to the tight labour market, and the implementation of a significant change project in the form of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which has resulted in changed work practices.

The Public Trustee has made a number of changes during the year to support employee wellbeing. These include providing greater flexibility to work from home, amending policy to enable earlier recruitment to fill vacancies and increased staff training in areas such as mental health awareness. The changes are to support our employee’s positive contribution in what is sometimes a difficult role.

The Public Trustee received 81 public complaints during 2022-23, of which 77% were determined to have no matters to address, while 27 compliments were also received.

The Public Trustee’s net operating result for 2022-23 was $20,000 favourable to budget.  This was offset by a minor over expenditure on capital works due to the refresh of critical ICT infrastructure that occurs every 4 years.

Nicolle Rantanen

Public Trustee