Waitaki District Council

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Fujitsu delivers IT infrastructure to Waitaki District Council

Waitaki District Council has enhanced its technology management, improved system and network performance and cost efficiency, and clarified its strategic priorities as a result of a new partnership with Fujitsu.

The benefits are flowing after Fujitsu conducted a full IT Infrastructure Review, which has not only identified priorities for on-going IT work, but has also won the support and buy-in of all key stakeholders within the organisation.

Located in the North Otago region of New Zealand's South Island, Waitaki District Council is a comparatively small local government body servicing the needs of 20,000 residents.

Corporate Development Manager, Richard Mabon, said they commissioned Fujitsu to do the Infrastructure Review in early 2001 to help the organisation establish a clearer vision and strategy for its IT expenditure.

"We were being hampered in our ability to deliver the best possible service and to move forward in a strategic way by a lack of consistent standards across our IT environment," he said.

"The Council had three servers and two operating systems and we had been debating for some time as to whether we should move to one system. One of the key themes that emerged from the review was that the lack of standards was costing us money so it became a priority to address this first to enable other projects to happen in a cost-effective way."

The review covered everything from Waitaki District Council's existing desktop configurations and network platform through to specific application needs, e-business strategies and management concerns.

"This was a very useful exercise. Fujitsu undertook a full audit of our IT equipment and resources and talked to all the stakeholders, which uncovered a range of critical issues and identified key points of consensus.

"They also developed a list of recommendations based on our future IT requirements, which enabled us to seek budget approval from the Council and start planning actual projects," he said.

The Council engaged Fujitsu to develop an RFP document for the standardisation project, which the outsourcing vendor successfully won in a competitive tender.

Fujitsu has also been contracted for a three-year term as the Council's on-going IT services partner after demonstrating superior technical capabilities and resources, a high degree of flexibility in meeting the organisation's needs and a positive attitude that really impressed.

"Fujitsu offered a greater depth of expertise than the other vendors who tendered, as well as bringing a very proactive and 'can-do' approach to the exercise. While other companies highlighted the risks, Fujitsu showed us how they would address them.

"They showed more self-belief and in the small amount of work they had already done for us they had demonstrated a real range of skills and a willingness to draw on both national and international expertise as required. "Fujitsu also indicated very quickly that they were willing to partner with local service providers to ensure the best outcome for the Council. They knew a local person who could do urgent on-site work as needed, which offered us both cost and service benefits in terms of achieving a fast response for on-site technical support," he said.

Fujitsu has completed the standardisation project, migrating the Council's two Novell servers to Windows 2000 and establishing a Standard Operating Environment (SOE) for the organisation's desktop computers.

"All desktop systems are now consistent with the Council's new standards, simplifying training and support requirements while enhancing our ability to manage our IT assets" explained Mr Mabon.

Mr Mabon said Fujitsu had significantly enhanced the SOE project with a custom-developed software tool called NetImage, which sits on the server and loads software images onto each desktop through the network.

"This replaces the manual process of loading and updating software, and enables us to know exactly what is on each computer. It's very fast and everything is done remotely from a central location, ensuring that all users have access to the applications they need and that versions are consistent across the organisation."

Fujitsu provided one of NetImage's creators to train Council staff on the software tool to develop a level of confidence prior to launching the desktop SOE project.

"This is just another example of the incredible depth of expertise Fujitsu has and the value they add to our organisation. We're also talking to them about on-going Help Desk support and are working with Fujitsu to develop detailed strategies for ongoing development of geographic information systems, Web site/intranet and electronic document management." he said.