Geoscience Australia shakes up IT support with $16.6m Leidos deal

Geoscience Australia has appointed Leidos Australia as its new IT services provider, six months ahead of the expiry of an existing contract with Cirrus.

The geoscientific research agency signed a $16.6 million deal with Leidos to provide ICT managed services for the next three years.

Geoscience has been working with Perth-based Cirrus since May 2021, under an initial $13 million contract that has since increased to $20.3 million and expires in December.

Leidos Australia told iTnews that its services remit will cover core systems, including on-premises infrastructure, app support, cloud platforms, network, and cyber security, as well as helpdesk support.

Leidos Australia added that the agreement would also cover “ongoing improvements and support[ing] a resilient and mature IT environment”.

In its Data and Digital Strategy [pdf], released last year, Geoscience Australia describes its IT environment as unsuited to “traditional centralisation models” whereby “ICT manage all technology”.

As such, the agency is looking to implement a “franchise support model” that classifies corporate capabilities such as network, compute, operating systems and storage into “foundational” enterprise digital and data services.

While these will remain centrally managed, specialised science capabilities will be franchised out to specific teams to support and manage, the strategy report said.

The delivery restructure comes as part of a wider effort to uplift Geoscience’s digital and data capabilities by 2028, with a focus on creating a “responsive, resilient and connected data infrastructure” that improves internal accessibility.

Less than two years ago, the agency announced plans to modernise the storage infrastructure underpinning a six-petabyte pool of petroleum exploration data, moving from tape to cloud.

The agency alluded to its ongoing data challenges in its most recent corporate plan [pdf], noting that recent “advances in technologies come with significant positive impact, but not without challenges”.

“Volumes of data being generated are growing significantly and the ways in which users interact with data continue to evolve, including through increased use of cloud computing, artificial intelligence tools and integration of data from different sources,” the corporate plan added.