EPA Victoria signs $52m IT services deal with Empired

Victoria's environmental regulator has selected Empired as its IT services provider for up to the next six years under a new $52 million deal.

Source: EPA Victoria

The initial four-year managed services contract, which includes two one-year extension options, was revealed in a financial filing [pdf] on Wednesday.

Empired will provide “modern digital managed services” across the Environment Protection Authority Victoria’s cloud platforms, networks and largely Microsoft-based applications.

The company will also take a “DevOps approach to underpin ongoing, iterative enhancements to core systems ensuring [they] do not go ‘stale’ and remain relevant”.

The contract, which is valued at $8.8 million per year, comes amid the EPA’s ongoing transformation of its technology estate in a bid to make its services more citizen friendly.

As part of this, the agency has already overhauled its air quality monitoring app and website, allowing it to cope with an influx of traffic during the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires.

“Over the last couple of years, EPA has made significant investments to uplift its digital capability,” interim CIO Abhijit Gupta said.

“This is a key enabler for the Environment Protection Act 2017 that comes into effect on 1 July 2021.”

Gupta added that he is “excited” by the new partnership, with the transition of services to occur over the next six months. All core services are expected to be in place by January 2022.

Empired managing director and CEO Russell Baskerville said the company is “proud to have been selected by EPA to manage essentially of its digital assets”.

“This contract will transform Empired’s Australian East Coast operations, bring credibility in delivering large, complex multi-year services,” he added.

Earlier this week, Empired revealed it was considering an acquisition offer of $233 million from systems integrator Capgemini.