“The objective of Digital On Demand was to determine what information we have, what we need to keep, how to categorise and sentence it, what should be destroyed, and how to dispose of it sensibly,” says Radford College chief operations officer David Perceval. “We engaged an independent consultant to determine the most suitable method for achieving this, and after evaluating various options, Castlepoint stood out as the most viable and effective.”

The college is using Castlepoint to maintain a single, unified view of data stored in its school management system, Synergetic, as well as Microsoft SharePoint files and shared datasets and repositories.

The Castlepoint platform gives Radford College the ability to automatically index, search and control information, deduplicates and flags data for disposal, and enables access controls. Minimising the volume and type of information the college stores also dramatically reduces the school’s risk profile.

“We previously relied on archiving through various registers in Microsoft Word and spreadsheets, with files placed in off-site storage – often never recalled or required again,” recalls Perceval.

“Bringing Castlepoint into the fold gave us a systemic, policy, and process-based approach to information management. This reduces risk, saves time and money as we can reduce the cost of storage space, and makes us confident we are compliant with records management principles and our own policies, and meeting our obligations under the ACT Education Act.”

The deployment sees Radford College storing its paper files—many of which have been stored for decades—online.

Castlepoint will also help the college rapidly respond to information requests, including those pertaining to legal processes, workers compensation, and building claims, for example.

“Schools – particularly those with communities as large as Radford College’s – hold significant amounts of student, parent, and teacher information, alongside extensive operational data. Much of the information that needs to be retained on the network is highly sensitive or personal to stakeholders,” says Castlepoint co-founder and CEO Rachael Greaves.

“The extension of the College’s formal information management practices, powered by Castlepoint’s Explainable AI, ensures Radford College has a centralised view of its records so it can apply the right rules around their access, and destroy sensitive and obsolete data that it is no longer required to retain. Radford is a trusted institution and is known for its commitment to its students. Protecting and preserving their records is a key part of this mission.”

Radford College is the second largest K-12 school in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). It enrols about 2,200 students per year and employs 300 full time stuff plus up to 200 part time coaches and contractors.

The college introduced the Castlepoint platform to automate and de-risk the management of significant volumes of sensitive data and personally identifiable information (PII) in its custodianship.