Who will be state & local government's CIO of the year?

 Todd Crawford - Tasmania Police   

           TasPol computer replacement project            

Many police forces around the world have jumped on the productivity dividends reaped from handing out mobile devices to officers.

Tasmania Police's gutsy rollout, however, while not the first has been just as much about reducing expenditure on software licences in tough budgetary conditions.

TasPol distributed Windows 8 tablets to all 1000 frontline staff and made devices their primary machine, allowing it to strip excess machines out of its training rooms and incident rooms and end the duplication of devices amongst workers.

Judges were impressed with the smart decisions the team made along the way like weighing up the cost of ruggedising tablets against the actual cost of replacing a small number of dropped devices, and giving officers the freedom to take the devices home (and charge them) instead of investing in charging docks.

Colin Jones - Service NSW

Virtualisation of SNSW contact centres

Established as a one-stop hub to deliver customer-facing services for a range of NSW agencies, Service NSW faced the dual challenge of modernising inherited legacy contact centres and expanding and modernising at pace.

In response, the agency completely rebuilt the state’s Genesys contact centre platform with a fully virtualised, software-as-a-service model supported through a third party. The project has expanded to 520 seats across two contact centres.

The effort is delivering an impressive return on investment for the NSW government by removing the need for a dedicated disaster recovery site while also creating new business opportunities.

David Schneider - NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet

Activity-based working transformation 

NSW’s Department of Premier and Cabinet sees itself on the forefront of the push towards activity-based working in the public sector.

When the NSW government decided not to renew its lease at Sydney’s Governor Macquarie Tower and move into more cost effective premises at Martin Place, CIO David Schneider seized the opportunity to overhaul the offices.

In a novel move for a government agency, he reworked network infrastructure at the new site, introduced mobile devices, hot desks, unified communications, telephony portability and end-to-end electronic document management to enable the new collaborative environment.

The department is confident the move will improve the IT team’s reputation amongst staff and position the organisation as a workplace of choice for the best candidates on the market.