My Volunteer Experience - Jacinta Jiawei Qi | SAcommunity

Submitted by Volunteer Jacin... on Tue, 09/17/2024 - 19:58

Welcome Jacinta!

Jacinta Jiawei Qi joined our SAcommunity Team as a volunteer, beginning with the team this year on the 23 August 2024. She attends for ~4 hours a week onsite at the Connecting Up office, Infoxchange around her university studies and other commitments.

Total Hours 64 This year 20 Joined 23 August 2024 Last Check-in 26 February 2025

Personal Biography

Jacinta Jiawei Qi is a second year Master student of Data Science at the University of Adelaide. She has a Bachelor in Jurisprudence from Shanghai International Studies University and a Masters in Accounting from Kent State University, Ohio. Jacinta has previously worked as an accountant and tax consultant in both China and the US. Being fascinated at how AI and software can improve the efficiency and accuracy of the daily work, she chose to study Data Science to further her interests in the analytics field. She is currently interning at Brentnalls SA Chartered Accountants and Advisers focusing on optimizing and automating their workpaper processing procedures.

Jacinta is undertaking volunteering at Infoxchange to gain some practical work experience in Australia. To both further her understanding of the local work culture, and to make new networks and connections in Adelaide. She aims to utilise her existing skill-set to work on further exploring SAcommunity's open data, and to investigate other tools and automation in the Data Analytics program to improve efficiencies for the team.

Jacinta’s career goal is become a data analyst or software engineer combining her accounting and information technology knowledge. She is eager to keep exploring how software and AI can change the world, applying the knowledge into actual use and improving or creating something that could benefit the company or even the whole community.

Community Services in Council Project

Jacinta has selected Burnside Council for her Power BI council reports, utilizing a database of approximately 225 community services operating in the area for the financial year 2022-2023. When completed they will be able to be found >>here and follow up reports from Stathis and Pujan.

Creating community service information data presentations involves several key steps. Jacinta began by cleaning and validating raw CSV files extracted from Google Analytics 4 and SAcommunity, utilizing both Excel functions and manual cross-checking to transform the data. Once cleaned, the data was compiled into comprehensive Excel files and summarized to highlight key trends.

Image: Burnside Council Year 2022-2023 Report

Insights from Google Analytics and SAcommunity data were further visualized in Power BI, revealing data anomalies and areas needing correction. The database was then updated, and reports were re-created to reflect the improved information accurately.

Digital Training & Development

Volunteers and interns have access to the Connecting Up Digital Learning Platform providing live webinars and recorded webinars, workshops and webcons presented by subject-matter experts to understand more about a range of technology topics for the not-for-profit sector.

Relevant training sessions were selected, attended, summarised and assessed by Jacinta to look at how these sessions can enhance her volunteer experience have included:

Microsoft Power Platform - Build your first app in a day

The Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of tools that enables end users to develop applications, automate workflows, analyze data and create custom solutions. Throughout this lecture, I gained proficiency in utilizing Power Apps, which is a tool designed to build applications that steamline approval workflows, facilitate model comparisons and so on.

Computer Status Tracking Application

To better understanding how Power Platform helped InfoXchange design and implement the computer status tracking system. The system enables staff to log the status of the computer they are working on, selecting predefined conditions such as Good, Bad, or Missing as well as entering comments and report dates through a clean, structured interface.

Imgage: Computer Status Power App - Logging and monitoring computer status with condition status, dates and comments

This solution improves monitoring by allowing issues to be logged as they occur and automatically storing the data in SharePoint for real-time tracking and analysis. The supervisor could also monitor relevant issues and identify recurring problems.

Imgage: Sharepoint Integration for centralized tracking, reporting, and real-time issue monitoring.

By doing that, Power Apps gives me a more professional and form-based interface. It also reduces human error and improves validation which Excel greatly relies on manual inputs.

Certificate

Jacinta was awarded a certificate of completion, which acknowledges the topics covered during the course. Furthermore, she actively applies the skills acquired to enhance the operational efficiency of Infoxchange.

Imgage: Cerfificate of Completion: Microsoft Power Platform - Build your first app

Data Catalyst Network (DCN)

The Data Catalyst Network (DCN) aims to break cycles of disadvantage through the innovative use of data. The DCN is made up of close to 50 organisations working with data from the not-for-profit community sector, a partnership between Infoxchange and the Paul Ramsay Foundation. Volunteers and Interns have the opportunity to attend these stakeholder meetings to understand how data is being used across the sector.

How to Get Better Decisions from your Data

The presentation focused on the business capability that defines metrics addressing the need of stakeholders and communications effectively with IT and the data team.

The reason why metrics is complex relied on several reasons, such as used by various stakeholders and various systems or heavily scrutinized. Common problems could also be found such as difficult visualisation, difficulty in understanding the metric and time pressure to get the report.

Therefore, it is essential to ensure clear communications among stakeholders and data analyst. Analyst should also keep in mind to anchor the metric to the original purpose.

The lecture also included a practical eample focusing improving the client satisfaction. It emphasized the importance of the "4W" structure—What, When, Where, and Which—to help data analysts align more effectively with the underlying business question. Related metrics and data selections such as client data, timesheets or replies would be followed getting the results and analysis.

Image: Webinar of How to get better decisions from you data

Supervisor and Peer-to-Peer Learning and Discussion Sessions

In the office, the volunteers and interns joined the supervisor-led and peer-to-peer learning sessions focusing on improving the efficiency in reporting, discovering meaningful contributions among colleagues and so on. This reflective learning approach not only enhanced my technical skills but also promoted teamwork and continuous improvement.

Cake and Connect - R U OK? DAY on 10 September 2024

In preparation for R U OK Day, the volunteers and interns welcomed the opportunity to come together over cake and meaningful conversations. It served as a gentle reminder to check in with people around us and ensured the mental and emotional well-being.

The volunteers and interns valued the relaxed environment, where they inquired about each other's feelings and shared ideas on healthy habits they can incorporate into our routines to improve our overall well-being. This simple yet impactful approach fostered a sense of connection and reinforced the importance of being mindful of one another’s health.

Image: Cake & Connect, a break from the screens with IX's staff and current interns and volunteers Navodani, Alex, Julia, James (Web Developer), Aaron, Eric (Account Manager), Chloe (Marketing Coordinator), Rex, Mihir, Jason, Eily, and Kurinji)