CSC locks in WA prisons database deal

The West Australian Department of Corrective Services has awarded IT services provider CSC a $4.3 million contract to manage a database of the state's prisoners.

The three-year deal with two one-year options will see CSC maintain a ten-year old database of WA criminal offenders in custody called TOMS or the 'Total Offender Management System'. 

TOMS maintains a multimedia-capable record of each offender until five years after their release from prison, before the data is hived off to archives for a further 70 years.

TOMS has gradually been upgraded over the years, with biometric access being implemented in 2008, among other enhancements. CSC engineers are currently working to port the application from Microsoft Visual Basic to .Net, a project the company expects to take between 12 and 18 months.

The TOMS deal, awarded to CSC after a competitive tender process, is the latest in a series of WA wins for CSC. It already provides IT services to several WA utilities and Government departments [see table below].

It forms part of a trio of tenders released by the WA Attorney General and Department of Corrective Services after WA's former Department of Justice was split in two in 2007.

In September 2009, CSC won a five-year deal to provide help desk, network security and IT infrastructure services for WA's court system (via the WA Attorney General's Department) and prisons (via the Department of Corrective Services). The first year of this deal alone is expected to yield CSC some $10.5 million in revenues.

A third tender - for the provision of application support and 'minor upgrades' to the Department of Corrective Services' non-core standard business applications - closes this Wednesday. CSC has confirmed it has tendered for this business.

Mike Horton, CSC Australia's vice president of Chemical, Energy and Natural Resources said the IT services company has made a big investment in Western Australia - now employing some 940 staff (including sub-contractors).

He said the Department's IT requirements had been offered as three separate tenders due to the split from the WA Attorney General's department and the trend towards selective sourcing contracts.

"It is advantageous for both the department if one service provider wins a number of those contracts," he said. "It is simply easier. But they are testing the market to ensure they are getting the best possible outcome."

CSC now delivers IT services to a range of West Australian Government departments, including:

• Complete IT outsourcing to WA Water.
• Mainframes and desktop infrastructure support to Western Power.
• Project services to WA Police.
• Infrastructure services and some applications work to the WA Attorney General's department.
• Project-based work to the WA Department of Planning and Infrastructure.
• IT Infrastructure and data centre support to the WA Department of Treasury and Finance.
• Some technology proof of concept trials underway with WA Health.