Australia House of Parliament

Australian Government Agencies Adopt CriticalArc’s SafeZone

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Thousands of Australian Public Sector Workers Protected as Government Agencies Adopt CriticalArc’s SafeZone Technology

Latest wave of adoptions driven by framework agreement enabling rapid procurement

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, 23 SEPTEMBER 2020 – Thousands more public sector employees in Australia are to benefit from 24/7 safety support, enhanced lone-worker protection and organisation-wide emergency response following the adoption of SafeZone® by key government agencies.

The service, from CriticalArc, has been adopted by the Australian Tax Office (ATO), Sydney Trains, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Government House Melbourne, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and – in the first use of the technology by an Australian public healthcare provider – St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney.

This new wave of adoptions, with multi-year contracts, comes after the successful deployment of SafeZone by Sydney Trains and New South Wales Transport. The procurement framework agreement originally put in place as a result of the ATO contract, now allows more rapid, easy adoption by other public agencies, both locally and nationally.

SafeZone is already widely used in the higher education sector, in Australia and globally, and has become the most popular single-platform solution to enable organisations to manage all personal safety, security and emergency situations more quickly, effectively and proactively to better protect their employees. It enables individual users to call for assistance and receive rapid response at the touch of a button, and provides the tools for their organisation to manage an optimal response to any situation.

Geo-fencing allows users to be protected by SafeZone even when they are working remotely. It allows individuals to request emergency help or general support and ensures that their location can be immediately pinpointed by first responders. When used with integrated indoor positioning functionality it allows users to be located to within three metres, even in multi-floor buildings.

The service makes it easy for organisations to manage a wide range of situations, mitigating risks to staff and customers and strengthening the capacity to respond to incidents and emergencies. For example, at

Sydney Trains the technology puts up to 2,500 front-line staff directly in touch with security control room teams, and now covers more than 175 urban and suburban stations.

Mark Edmonds, Sydney Trains’ Manager of Security Capability, Network Operations says this is protecting employees on crowded city platforms at rush-hour and those working alone at night in remote suburban stations.

“Sydney Trains is committed to fulfilling our duty of care to all of our staff and enhancing our high safety standards in order to maintain and enrich customer service levels on station platforms. Employing proven technology such as SafeZone will help us solve day-to-day challenges, further improving the safety of our staff and helping them work more effectively to continue to deliver world-class service.”

Glenn Farrant, CEO, CriticalArc, welcomed the latest adoptions across Australia’s public services as significant step forward for improved employee safety and duty of care.

“It’s great to see the technology’s benefits being recognised by visionary teams in many sectors.” he said. “Thanks to the framework agreement we now have in place, public agencies can move ahead with rapid procurement. We look forward to working with many more of Australia’s public agencies in the coming months.”

He added that SafeZone has also played an important role helping organisations adapt to the challenges of COVID-19. Thanks to its ability to be deployed rapidly – in recent cases in as little as one week – it is enabling users to ramp-up preparations for safe returns to work, and helping with the re-opening of sites in compliance with stringent new requirements.

SafeZone has proved itself to be a high value service that’s highly adaptive and is giving organisations a tangible boost to employee safety and wellbeing.

For more information on CriticalArc and SafeZone go to https://criticalarc.com/industries/government-sector/ or https://criticalarc.com/contact/.

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 About CriticalArc

CriticalArc provides SafeZone®, the leading safety, security and emergency management solution that helps large organizations keep their people safe and respond more effectively to critical incidents so they can fulfil their duty of care and mitigate risks. SafeZone fundamentally transforms the ability to manage personal safety, security and emergency situations so organizations can respond consistently and more than 50% faster to protect their most important asset, their people. Through real-time visualization, communications and response coordination, SafeZone has established a new benchmark for organizations to protect their community that streamlines operations, is easy to use and quick to deploy.

Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, CriticalArc has offices and operations in the UK and North America providing an international delivery capability and reach. For more information on CriticalArc and SafeZone, please go to www.criticalarc.com.

 

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