The Victorian government controls the use and flow of the state’s water which is an absolutely vital resource for many aspects of life and commerce across the state. This resource is also under considerable pressure and has reached sustainable limits due to elements such as climate change and urban growth.
The Challenge
The DELWP’s ageing Application Management System was unable to provide additional services or deliver enhancements for outside agencies or partners as its inflexibility prevented the contracted technical team from focusing on more than one priority at a time. Further, innovations or changes that may provide immediate benefits could not be enacted quickly due to a cumbersome change process required. A new, outsourced system was necessary to improve the support the Water Register can offer to key users such as irrigators, rural domestic users, commercial organisations and the environment in general. While the register also supports the government in resource management and compliance by supplying water across all user types it had found that the complexity of irrigators’ needs meant that their fulfilment ensured everything else was catered for. But this wide range of responsibilities and duties had resulted in a Water Register system made up of 10 applications of varying technology, type and importance.
The Datacom Difference
Datacom was contracted to provide support and development for the Water Register systems and find new ways to improve water use efficiency and management of water scarcity, utilizing a Microsoft solution based on Dynamics AX. We then provided reliable services to support the current systems and immediately action a significant change program in parallel. We delivered a new solution for wholesale water that supports a managed end to end lifecycle of water as well as significant customer improvements by establishing a more agile delivery model that provides more frequent functional releases. The process began with a five-strong team in Melbourne that initiated a transitional process, including a total systems and technical knowledge transfer, which permitted the department to organise two new major releases a year. Once completed the resulting outsourced system was moved into operational, or business as usual, mode.
The Results
As well as improved, accuracy, utility and reliability, the inclusion of a formal Service Level Agreement between the two parties meant the DELWP finally gained visibility across their full service range which further enabled it to focus on the business priorities within the water register.
“Datacom have been able to show how outsourcing the Application Management System has added a higher level of transparency and reliability that we could not have achieved alone.”
Brett Miller, Manager, Water Information Systems, DELWP