Corporate Service Corps in Brisbane finishes with a bang!

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Author: Anne McNeill, IBM Corporate Citizenship, Senior Program Manager

Since 2008, IBM’s Corporate Service Corps program has sent teams of the company’s most talented employees to provide pro bono counsel to countries in the developing world that are grappling with issues that intersect business, technology, and society.

The initiative deploys teams of IBM employees from around the world with skills in technology, scientific research, marketing, finance, human resources, law, and economic development.

In 2018 the Corporate Service Corps expanded globally. Pilot projects are taking place in Australia, Canada and the United States. In Australia, the first of these projects kicked off  in Brisbane.

The team enjoy a getting-to-know you Thai dinner

Working with two Aussie icons

From August 6 -August 31 fourteen IBMers from eight countries collaborated with partner organisations. Their aim was to investigate, research and recommend the best ways to capture and harness data for better outcomes. Their mission was to use existing technology combined with state-of-the-art technology to improve their service delivery or advance their research to solve problems.

In Brisbane seven of the team members collaborated with the iconic Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS) on two projects. They aimed to:

1. Identify ways for RFDS to improve their resourcing capability to assist with planning and mobilising their doctors, nurses and aircraft to the neediest places in a short turn-over time.

2. Review the current patient-clinician telehealth pathway to assess what technology enhancements could be made to improve patient health outcomes.

Seven other IBMers collaborated with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in conjunction with The Global Change Institute (GCI) at the University of Queensland on two projects focused on coral reef conservation. They aimed to:

1. Identify ways that advanced data technologies (big data techniques, cognitive analysis, artificial intelligence, internet of things) can improve the understanding of coral reefs, the complex suite of threats that affect them, and approaches to informing conservation action.

2. Identify data, including non-traditional data sources that will provide information that betters our understanding of the health of coral reefs, and the pressures they are facing now and in the future.

When the projects ended, the team and our partners all seemed sad for their collaborations to come to an end. The team took pride in their recommendations, and both WWF and RFDS seemed extremely pleased.

Proud IBMer

Both teams did an outstanding job of coming up with recommendations that can be put into action. For the WWF team, they came back with out of the box ideas including recommending blockchain technology for research data. The RFDS teams also recommended cutting-edge technologies and ways to harness their data to make better-informed decisions.

I am so proud to be an IBMer. It’s been inspiring to have seen first-hand how a smart group of IBM employees can positively impact the world.