CrimTrac overhauls ICT back-office
The nation's peak law enforcement technology agency CrimTrac has flagged plans for a major overhaul of its back-end ICT infrastructure that will deliver it a strong business continuity capability.
Canberra-based CrimTrac was established in 2000 with the aim of developing technology that supports information being distributed nationally to aid with policing. For example, the agency is currently focused on national databases around fingerprint and DNA identification, child sex offenders and operational policing data.
In tender documents released last week, the agency said it wanted to build a business continuity and disaster recovery capability to support its operations, describing its technology as "critical infrastructure" for law enforcement agencies around Australia.
The agency will create two new datacentres, one primary and one secondary, and install new hardware and network links to support and monitor its applications, with the scope of the project to include all of its mid-range servers. Most of its business applications rest on Windows servers virtualised with VMware, and Oracle running on Sun Microsystems' Solaris platform.
A CrimTrac spokesperson was not immediately available to respond to questions on what the services had previously cost or who the agency's current service providers were, but in the tender documents CrimTrac noted it wanted to cut their numbers down.
"The server, storage and database infrastructure that powers these business applications is supported by a combination of CrimTrac's internal infrastructure support group and under three outsourced support agreements," it wrote. "It is the intention of CrimTrac that an outcome of this Request for Tender will be to consolidate these sources of support into a single provider."
CrimTrac also appeared to suggest it wanted to shift to another provider to source infrastructure relating to its internal staff (such as Exchange email and Active Directory services) as compared with outward-facing business applications.
Overall management of CrimTrac's technology environment is to remain under the control of its chief technology officer, believed to be Anthony Martin.
The news comes as fears have recently been expressed that a slowdown in Federal Government technology spending due to the recommendations of the Gershon report and the global financial crisis could have an adverse affect on Canberra's ICT market.