The NSW Government’s Office of Finance and Services has announced it has signed contracts with Unisys and Infosys to outsource the back office functions previously undertaken by shared service provider Service First.
ServiceFirst has provided support to NSW Government agencies including the Department of Finance, Services & Innovation (DFS&I), Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC), Department of Planning and Environment (DP&E), The Treasury (Treasury), Service NSW (SNSW) and the Public Service Commission (PSC).
Announced the signing, NSW Minister for Finance, Services and Property, Dominic Perrottet, said the move will provide over 6000 public servants with the latest technology and tools, improved customer service and 24/7 support.
“The hard-working ServiceFirst staff have done a terrific job in a difficult environment of making legacy systems and processes work for the agencies they support,” he said. “But this model is inefficient, expensive, based on outdated technology and design for a nine to five world which no longer exists. This is causing our staff frustration and costing taxpayers money.”
The six-year contracts are reportedly valued at more than $200 million, with the move to outsource expected to deliver savings of around $20 million per annum.
Unisys and Infosys will be implementing a hybrid delivery model from both onshore and offshore locations, with a new specialist delivery centre established in Western Sydney.
In addition to providing around the clock user support, the contracts will see IT service provision shift to an ‘as a service’ model where agencies will be charged on a consumption basis, rather than annual billing. Multiple on-premise ERP solutions will also be consolidated into a single SAP cloud-based platform, and transitioned to the NSW Government data centres, in line with the NSW ICT Strategy.
Unisys will provide end-to-end outsourced IT services including mobile device, laptop and desktop support; central computing infrastructure support including server, storage, networking and data centres; IT service management including a centralised service desk in Sydney; desk-side support; and application services, while Infosys will manage payroll, HR and financial services for the agencies.
Unisys plans to use a persona-based approach to delivering IT services to end users, matching support to their particular role, rather than providing a one-size-fits-all solution. Clients will be able to select business and IT services, aggregated from multiple sources across the enterprise, from a service catalogue via the Unisys VantagePoint solution.
In the first phase of the program, Unisys will assume management of ServiceFirst’s existing environment and that of its client agencies. Unisys will then implement a transformation program to transition the client agencies to a future consumption-based model, running on Unisys-owned systems in the new GovDC location. The transition to the new model will be completed by December 2015.
