Crime Commission seeks telecoms refresh

The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) has issued a $2.2 million tender for a panel of telecommunications service providers to refresh its video-conferencing systems.

The national agency resides under the Attorney-General's Department and is charged with combating organised and serious crime across Australia. It has around 600 employees in every metropolitan city across Australia, with two datacentres located in Sydney and Canberra.

According to the tender documents, the ACC is looking to replace its room-based video-conferencing system with a unified system for communication that will bring together the organisation's instant messaging, email, telephone and video-conferencing equipment. Polycom currently provides much of the agency's video-conferencing equipment.

The ACC is looking for a mixture of telepresence, table-top and mobile technologies for video-conferencing, which must be able to broadcast video in 720 pixels at 30 frames per second with high-definition audio. The network must be able to handle up to 15 simultaneous HD video streams and a further 10 low-resolution video streams.

The system must also have the ability to record the conferences, because in addition to being used for internal communications, the conferencing system is used to record witness testimony as part of criminal investigations.

The unified audio and video communications system must be compatible with the ACC's Microsoft Office Communicator instant-messaging system to allow ACC staff to initiate a video call with each other from within the program.

Desktop virtualisation via Citrix is used by all employees in the organisation.

Submissions for the tender are to be in by 28 September, and the implementation of the new video-conferencing system is scheduled to begin on 23 October.