iRAP’s Global Programme and Communications Manager Judy Williams was delighted to present this week at Something Digital in Brisbane, sharing iRAP Connect and the Partner Portal, as well as the AiRAP Initiative, with Australia’s brightest digital minds.

Previous Something Digital speakers have derived from Dreamworks Animation, Google Creative Lab, Instagram, iRobot, eBay, NYC Media Lab, the White House Presidential Fellowship, Governance of the AI Initiative, Reddit, Airbus for Pioneering Sustainable Aerospace, World Identity Network, and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, amongst others.

With the theme “Interconnectivity – Better, Stronger, Faster from our own Backyard”, Judy joined our Technical Partner NTT to share how iRAP is leveraging technology to connect people and data across the world to make roads safer.

With a footprint of influence across 90% of the world’s countries and a small team of limited resources, iRAP is challenged to reach and engage our near 30,000 partners in a 24-hour timezone, managing disparate IT systems and constant change in political and partner movements.

Judy shared that five years ago, iRAP was drowning with a dream.

“Both iRAP’s and our partners’ resources are limited and we held 20 years of data and reports on different hard drives and in documents spread world-wide. Our dream was for a digital Partner Management System that would enable us to store and protect the world’s knowledge and experience applying the iRAP Methodology to make roads safer. We needed a digital system that would enable us to collate and link our data meaningfully, track it over time with searchability, and share it with our partners to build their capacity empowered by the knowledge of those that came before them working in their countries. We also knew that it would be immensely powerful if we could digitally connect partners together and provide them with access to other countries’ learnings and resources for efficiency,” Judy said.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of FedEx and our major donor FIA Foundation, as well as the brilliant technical acumen of NTT, Barhead and two wonderful volunteers, our Microsoft Partner Management System iRAP Connect and the Partner Portal is now a reality.

iRAP Connect connects the 29,000 people and 8,000 organisations we work with, in the 290 countries and states we work in. It links all the activities and knowledge that exists for them, with training events that are building the capacity of over 63,000 people in 160 countries, practitioner accreditation and feedback on their work, the engineering projects leading to road upgrade investment, the policies leading to institutional impact on scale, and the agreements managing our global partnerships. Understanding that we can’t manage what we don’t manage, the system supports and shares the metrics measuring the success of the global programme in each country and world-wide helping to inform partner activity and success.

According to Judy, “Having a digital home for all our information was revolutionary to our operations, but it was the interconnections that were truly game-changing. Now if we’re meeting with a transport minister, we can tell them all the work that’s underway and has occurred over 20 years in their country to eliminate high-risk roads. If one of our team or partners on the other side of the world has a question, they don’t need to wait for someone to come online, or begin trying to find the best person to ask, because all the information is there 24/7 with meaningful context.

“The iRAP Partner Portal surfaces data out with our partners across the world so they too can know all we know about their country and others, search based on keywords, contribute to build their national profile, and connect independent of the iRAP team. Our 2030 vision is “Partnerships for 2030 Impact” and these tools are central to empowering our partners and partnerships across the globe,” Judy said.

During the presentation, Judy also shared how iRAP is working with 111 innovation partners and 11 of the world’s leading research centres to innovate for road safety and ensure that innovation is aligned to the one global standard and available to all partners regardless of their income status.

She shared how AiRAP projects in New South Wales, Western Australia and Vietnam are pioneering accelerated and intelligent capture of road safety-related data for the world’s benefit from Australia’s backyard, in a future that is bright for achieving our dream of star rating every road on earth.

“AI and digital twins are becoming central to our work as we look to the decade ahead and the global goal to halve road deaths and injuries by 2030,” she said.

“For me, my team and our partners, we go to work every day with a lion heart full of passion. We know that making new road designs safe and upgrading existing roads to be 3-star or better by 2030 stands to save 450,000 lives and serious injuries over the 20 year life of road treatments. I stand here today with the privilege to share the incredible work of our partners. I also stand here in immense gratitude to our donors and the generosity and acumen of the NTT team and our partners who have helped us build and maintain our digital solutions. We might today be talking about digital solutions helping us to be better, stronger, faster, but the ultimate story is the lives being saved because of it,” Judy concluded.

A copy of Judy’s presentation can be downloaded here.

For more information on iRAP Connect and the Partner Portal, including access, contact Judy on email judy.williams@irap.org

Judy and the NTT Team at Something Digital

Hear Judy and NTT’s Vice President Corporate Laura Ritson talking about the NTT partnership helping to leverage technology with the goal to save 450,000 lives globally on safer roads:

Images credit: NTT and iRAP