Multi-tenancy, multi-use case learning technology delivered as a shared service across whole of government

Government Funded Organisation LMS Case Study

CHALLENGE:  

The Australian Federal Government identified that they needed to create a centralised shared service for APS employees to access leading learning and development initiatives in a scalable and consistent way. This was triggered by requirements such as, but not limited to, improving employee retention, building the skills needed to future proof the APS workforce and ensuring best in class education was shared amongst agencies. 

The decision was made to create a central resource called Learnhub. Learnhub had 4 key problems to solve for: 

1. The ability to centralise a large volume of users in one location 

2. The ability for each participating government agency to continue to deliver on its own core priorities alongside the common capability-driven APS performance strategy  

3. The ability to share resources 

4. Any platform used must have the highest levels information security. 

ACORN SOLUTION:  

Acorn learning management system was selected to be the provider of choice for Learnhub. Acorn provides a central catalogue of shared content to 44 federal agencies. Individual agencies are able to create and share content throughout the entire shared service or restrict access to their tenancy and users. Agencies can also access content from a number of exclusive third-party providers, such as LinkedIn Learning and Go1.  

Content can be mapped to capability frameworks and development plans. Frameworks can be manually created or chosen from the system’s library, supporting the specific performance strategy of the Australian Government at large. 

Learnhub utilises a secure gateway for Single Sign On. This uses multiple systems in order to authenticate user access alongside a manual login option. User authentication is made through an external ADFS validation or against internal systems from each department, guaranteeing a high level of security for each tenancy and sub-tenancy. Acorn is also IRAP certified which is the highest level of security available. 

Each agency has its own tenancy, with some like the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment utilising several sub-tenancies to provide secure and compliant training to their internal teams as well as external users. Acorn also dynamically scales to support up to 44,000 users per annum, so agencies are not limited by user licenses and are assured of 99% system uptime. 

Via Acorn LMS, Learnhub has since become the largest shared learning service across federal government. Acorn LMS has maintained 100% user retention by providing flexibility larger departments crave whilst maintaining the ease of use and centralised platform that allows smaller organisations to thrive.