Tassie govt wants email migration help

The Tasmanian Government has put out a call for consultancies that can help it consolidate agencies working on different email platforms onto one central service.

As part of an IT transformation program, the Department of Premier and Cabinet consulted with government agencies at the end of last year to find out how it could make its service delivery more efficient by providing common platforms.

Email came out as the first cherry to be picked; the government allocated just under $9 million in its last budget to create a single email and calendar, supported by an identity and authentication platform to be used across the whole of government.

The hope is that once this platform is in place, it can be used as a foundation on which to build other cross-agency service delivery.

TMD, a Division of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, which delivers telecommunications and computing services for Tasmanian government agencies, is at the centre of the transformation work.

It now hopes that a consultant or advisor will help it move agencies onto a chosen environment, modify email tools, as well as test design changes and add functionality to the environment.

Attempts to provide government services centrally have been going on in state governments across Australia, such as Western Australia and Queensland. NSW has also just released a shared services blueprint.

As proved by the Queensland Government recently, and the Western Australian Government before that, consolidating some systems, such as payroll, can be fraught with risk and can result in much higher costs than the states originally budget.