Railcorp and Fujitsu outsourcing back on track

Fujitsu has announced that Railcorp has signed on for a two-year extension to a three-year IT outsourcing deal inked in 2006.

The New South Wales Government transport operator had originally signed Fujitsu to manage its data centre operations, desktop support and service desk in mid-2006 after a competitive tender process.

Included in that contract was an option to extend the deal a further two years, which was signed December 23.

Railcorp has suffered from a string of corruption allegations in the recent past - which has had some notable impact on its IT operations.

Railcorp chief information officer Vicki Coleman - who had months earlier been named by MIS magazine as "public sector CIO of the year" - was dismissed and escorted from the company's head office in mid-2009 whilst the company was mid-way through an IT transformation.

Six months on, Railcorp is still operating with group finance and corporate services general manager Gary Pederson standing in as acting CIO.

A spokesman for Railcorp told iTnews that the transformation has continued in the absence of the CIO.

So far, Railcorp has established a single ICT group, outsourced their data centre, service desk and desktop management, consolidated their data centres, upgrade and standardised server infrastructure, implemented a Standard Operating Environment for desktop and developed an ICT Strategic Plan.