Published on the 26/09/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
New South Wales this week provided an update on its 15 month-old ICT Strategy and additional details about how ICT vendors can interact with the State which currently spends $2 billion on ICT each year…
It was May 2012 when NSW unveiled its ICT Strategy intended to streamline spending and improve services for residents of the State. In the intervening 15 months the Department of Finance and Services has seen both a change of minister and chief information officer. The strategy however endures.
This week the recently appointed Finance and Services Minister Andrew Constance released an implementation update, detailing the progress made thus far, and the changes yet to come. For technology vendors the document, which can be downloaded here, provides useful timelines and indications of how the State government intends to source technology and services in the future.
A key role will be played by the State’s recently commissioned twin data centres at Silverwater and Unanderra. Besides consolidating 130 separate data centres scattered through the State, these facilities will also be used to host a range of cloud-based services in what the Government describes as a “cloud marketplace”, allowing small and medium vendors to host their systems in the Government data centres and offer them as a service from a secure government cloud. NSW released its cloud computing policy earlier this month.
The Government will release an as-a-service module under its Procure IT framework this quarter, although its comprehensive ICT sourcing guide is not expected to be released until the second quarter of 2014.
In terms of the services available for residents the Service NSW initiative sees the roll out of 18 one-stop shops, along with a single telephone number and call centre, and central online transaction website from where all interactions can be directed. According to the implementation update, “a customer will be able to renew their driver and fishing licences while also requesting a copy of their birth certificate from one place”.
The Minister also pledged to deliver an information management framework intended to “provide a suite of standards, guidelines and resources across departments to establish a robust approach to managing the state’s information assets”. An open data policy is also being devised which will be implemented in the second half of 2015 providing greater data access for citizens and vendors.
