CASE STUDY
Robe River Kuruma Aboriginal Corporation
Leveraging Microsoft tech for lasting community well-being and cultural identity across generations
The Robe River Kuruma community spans approximately 15,800 km2 in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, with 10,000 km2 falling under native title recognition, the RRK people maintain deep-rooted ancestral connections to this land. The iconic Robe River, intertwined with their heritage, symbolises their essence and holds a place of utmost significance in their cultural narrative.
Since its establishment in 2013, the Robe River Kuruma Aboriginal Corporation (RRKAC) has served as the official native title body corporate for the RRK People. With over 320 RRK individuals under its guardianship, RRKAC plays a vital role in advancing their collective interests. It serves as their voice when engaging with government and private sectors, ensuring their perspectives are acknowledged.
Beyond this, RRKAC diligently oversees and fulfills commitments outlined in the RRK people’s participation agreements. The corporation is dedicated to safeguarding the cultural heritage of the RRK community, offering essential services for its protection and preservation. Moreover, by harnessing resources from charitable trust funds, RRKAC initiates programs that uplift the RRK people’s quality of life, fostering their growth and prosperity.
RRKAC delivers services and programs that:
- Preserve, protect and promote RRK’s cultural heritage and Native Title interests
- Link members to personal and financial support that alleviates hardship
- Build the capacity for members to be independent
- Connect RRK peoples’ with information and each other
- Ensure the corporation’s activity is compliant with various agreements and legislation
In order to comply with the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006 RRKAC is required to exhibit strong governance, be fair and transparent, and report to the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations (ORIC).
When the collaboration between RRKAC and Illuminance Solutions began, the corporation was reliant on a third party for fund administration and application management. There were challenges and restrictions around the process, including:
- Restricted access to member and fund information
- Higher administration cost
- Dependency on a third-party provider for member services
- Duplication of data entry and tasks.
RRKAC was able to adopt illuminance Solutions’ holistic system, CTMS (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporation formerly known as ATMS), to rapidly address those challenges. The systems core is built on Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and the Common Data Model, drawing on support from other Microsoft Cloud Platform components such as the Office 365 suite, SharePoint and Microsoft Azure.
Since implementation, RRKAC has been able to achieve their goal of becoming independent and helping the RRK People in a more efficient manner.
Testimonial
“Among others, the fundamental core service that RRKAC provide the Robe River Kuruma people is to utilise trust funds to deliver programs for their betterment. Aligned under the same goal, RRKAC and illuminance Solutions formed a partnership to further refine the processes already in place around member services with CTMS as the enabler.
RRKAC realises the impact of streamlining the processes through CTMS will benefit the RRK people. We look forward to continuing the partnership with illuminance to further improve our system with the goal of serving the RRK people at the forefront.”
Brooke St. James
Member Services and Operations Manager, Robe River Kuruma Aboriginal Corporation
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