A new type of IT service delivery for the WA public sector and its people

The WA Government’s GovNext-ICT programme underpins the WA Digital Strategy and is focused on transforming government bodies from being owner-operators of ICT infrastructure, to being a consumer of commercial cloud, data centre, network and IP telephony services. The unique contract is completely consumption based and priced per user or per unit consumed.

The Government is one of Western Australia’s largest ICT purchasers spending between 3 to 5 per cent of the total state’s budget on ICT. The GovNext-ICT programme aims to shave hundreds of millions of dollars off the State Government’s ICT expenditure, greatly improving the quality and reliability of services, while boosting the efficiency of digital solutions to the citizens of WA.

A total of nine agencies, representing 80 per cent of government ICT, are committed to the new programme, which is estimated to be worth $3 billion in total. This programme aims to potentially save the State Government between $65 million and $80 million per year. In April 2017 Datacom signed a five-year (plus five-year extension) contract after a very thorough selection period involving more than 70 initial applications. The process started in October 2015 with an expression of interest and the State selected six short-listed companies to go through an interactive phase of workshopping and consultative solution design, before releasing a request for proposal to the six respondents in 2016.

Datacom was selected as a preferred supplier, and then subsequently awarded the contract to supply GovNext-ICT services alongside two others.

The Government Office of the CIO (GCIO) has established the GovNext Service Broker (GSB) to help agencies transition to the new arrangements, and provide management of the three successful respondents. The GSB will manage the contract with the vendors, which will include pricing, performance and the delivery of new technologies for the benefit of the sector.

GovNext-ICT programme aims to:

• Consolidate the 60 plus government data centres into a small number of highly resilient and interconnected data centres;
• Transition existing government platforms and workloads into a highly resilient and available multi-tenanted community cloud for WA Government with secure standardised connections to public cloud providers;
• Establish a whole-of-government unified network, enabling government user mobility and security to effectively work from any government agency; and enable extensive user self-provisioning and reporting capability across all services.

Datacom established a compelling value proposition for the delivery of services under GovNext-ICT which has been received extremely positively by the State (GCIO) and individual agencies:

• Datacom DNA – We deliver enduring performance to every customer through fresh thinking. Supported by our values of openness, doing it right and proving the promise;
• Proven Capability – We leave nothing to chance. We have chosen partners with proven solutions capable to scale to the current and future demands of WA Government; 
• WA Local First – We believe in local people delivering locally hosted solutions for WA Government. All services will be hosted and managed locally, supporting local jobs and ICT industry expertise;
• Focus on Customer Experience – We look through the eyes of our customers who  should expect an integrated and high quality end-to-end support experience. Datacom provides a single point of accountability and delivers an integrated support experience to our customers.

Datacom has designed and implemented a unique service delivery model to provide our partners with management and governance across the entire consortium, while ensuring a consistent support experience to our customers. The model includes a specifically designed service management toolset, and processes to provide agencies with a single view of service delivery performance across multiple partners, delivering different services.

Datacom’s extensive experience delivering services to the New Zealand Government and Australia’s state and federal governments, makes it the ideal partner to bring that innovation to Western Australia.

This forward thinking programme is set to transform how the Western Australian Government provides services to its citizens, providing the world-class infrastructure and support to match the Government’s vision for truly 21st century governance – flexible, efficient and cost effective.