New Zealand Department of Conservation

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NZ Department of Conservation partners with Fujitsu for IT upgrade and management

In 1998, with the Year 2000 approaching, the New Zealand Department of Conservation realised that much of its IT infrastructure would fail the millennium test and need upgrading. To complicate matters, the way in which the Department's infrastructure grew over the previous ten years had led to a non-standard environment that was difficult to maintain.

The millennium imperative, along with development of a far-reaching five-year corporate strategic business plan, drove a thorough overhaul of the whole IT structure and the business processes associated with it.

An information systems strategic plan identified 14 programs of work to be undertaken over the following five years. Underpinning the process would be the first - and largest - program, called Connect 2000.

Early on it was accepted that reducing total cost of ownership was an imperative, and that the Connect 2000 program could not be achieved with internal IT resources. So the Department began looking for a long-term strategic IT business partner.

Following a rigorous tender process, Fujitsu New Zealand was selected.

Under a five-year contract for Connect 2000, signed in March 1999, Fujitsu is supplying and managing a desktop computing environment and the associated network. The key objectives and business benefits of the project are to give the Department of Conservation:

An enterprise-wide information infrastructure, better management control over how IT is deployed and used, a technology infrastructure that can support users at any location, reliability, dependability, scalability and efficiency, lower total cost of ownership, lower overheads through having a single prime vendor, Year 2000 compliant systems, and asset management

Essentially, Fujitsu is now running IT services for the Department.

The process started with a re-design of the basic IT infrastructure, in close cooperation with Department staff. Fujitsu supplied new desktop computers, a wide area network, local area networks and associated cabling services. The network extensions have been implemented, a standardised server and client environment set up, and a department-wide intranet installed.

Fujitsu did most of the upgrade with its own staff, but in its role as project manager for Connect 2000 it subcontracted with Datacraft for maintenance and support of the WAN, and Premises Communications Ltd for LAN cabling and site environment.

Training is provided by Computerland as part of a separate contract with the Department of Conservation.

Fujitsu now has the ongoing role of supporting, maintaining and developing the IT system.

Before switching to outsourcing, the Department of Conservation had a central network management group in Wellington, and full- or part-time LAN administrators at each of the 13 local conservancy offices.

Channa Jayasinha, the Department's manager of information management, says it was "ad hoc" support at best. "We had many problems with it," he said.

"IT skills varied considerably from person to person, and there was no proper training plan for the staff to upskill themselves.

"Support was very difficult, because we had nearly 1,200 unique PCs, rather than any standard. We had little control over what the network was being used for, and support costs were high."

Adopting a standard desktop configuration would help contain costs and improve service, and it also gave the Department a choice.

"We could carry on managing the system in-house, but we could also outsource," said Mr Jayasinha. "The outsourcing option became more cost-effective when we considered things like how much it costs to train people every year, and how many more staff we would need to support the expanded network."

Support issues became a key factor in the equation when the Department decided to more than treble its networked sites, from 18 to 69.

"Fujitsu has offices throughout the country, and can give us on-site support anywhere," said Mr Jayasinha.

"Fujitsu can provide sophisticated central monitoring services. Remote management technologies have matured considerably, with tools like CA Unicenter and Microsoft's SMS."

These are among the toolsets in use at Fujitsu's Enterprise Management Centre and 'Action Centre' help desk service. "Perhaps we could have done all that ourselves, but it demands a high level of skills," said Mr Jayasinha. "To get our own staff up to the level required would have cost a lot more than Fujitsu can do it for."

Small organisations cannot expect to match the range of skills and international know-how offered by Fujitsu. Fujitsu can help reduce costs by sharing support infrastructure and specialist resources with a variety of clients.

In developing its five-year IT plan, the Department was determined to reduce the total cost of ownership of its IT system.

"We estimated the total cost of the Department's IT over five years would be $29 million if we carried on the way we were," said Mr Jayasinha.

"The Connect 2000 concept will reduce the five-year cost to $25 million, by introducing standards - by deploying 'locked-down' desktops, providing standard toolsets and introducing better business practices and processes. "We had to do something anyway. If we didn't achieve Y2K compliance, our business would eventually stop functioning. But rather than just doing Y2K compliance, we've taken it to the next step."

"We're committed to the Total Cost of Ownership model, and so is Fujitsu."

Department IT staff numbers are being greatly reduced. Head office staff will only be an operations manager and database administrator. Help desk and engineering support for head office and the conservancies will come from Fujitsu. Some existing Department staff may have an opportunity to transfer to Fujitsu.

The Fujitsu cost component itself is a known quantity: it is a fixed five-year contract.

The Connect 2000 project is running remarkably smoothly. This has been helped, Mr Jayasinha believes, by Fujitsu's business partnering concept. "We decided to go with Fujitsu in September 1998, but we didn't actually sign the contract until the following March.

"Before getting down to detailed contract negotiations, we looked at the Fujitsu concept of partnering, which they had used in large contracts with other organisations."

Key staff from Fujitsu, Computerland and Department of Conservation took part in a partnering workshop. Out of that came a charter which everyone signed.

"The Fujitsu partnering workshop and the alliances we built up through it, helped us in some difficult situations during the contract negotiations. "The key was having that partnering arrangement and being open about the project and the difficulties that we could face."

Issues of corporate culture are the greatest challenge and greatest risk in the Connect 2000 process, Mr Jayasinha believes. Technical issues, while complex, were mitigated by the use of proven off-the-shelf tools and applications, customised and integrated by Fujitsu. This avoided the need for large-scale software development work.

"We knew from the start that the biggest issues would be cultural, and we've set out to communicate and consult through roadshows, visits, conferences and monthly fact sheets," Mr Jayasinha said.

"Staff within the Department were used to their particular desktop applications and we knew that the move to a standard desktop was going to be difficult.

"They tend to say, 'I am a unique person and I have unique requirements like no other.' But when you take a closer look, you find that 80 per cent of their requirements are the same."

During Connect 2000's proof of concept phase, Fujitsu built the 'base image' which all Department staff get. It's a set of tools, including Microsoft Office, which let them do about 80 per cent of their work. For the remaining 20 per cent, around 50 applications were tested and added to the base toolset. That compared with more than 500 existing applications.

Mr Jayasinha admits there's been plenty of lobbying from people wanting to retain their specialist applications.

"So we've set up an internal software advisory committee, and we've applied corporate software standards. First, unless applications are Y2K, Windows NT and Citrix compliant, they're out of the game. Then we look at support and reliability aspects.

"We've always looked at a broad range of issues before making software decisions, and we've tried to communicate that to users."

The former individual approach to computing also led to a proliferation of standalone databases - more than 1,200 at last count.

"There might be 30 different possum management systems rather than one." There will be a concerted attempt over the next three years to migrate separate databases onto a reduced number of national databases.

"Connect 2000 makes this possible by fully networking our organisation, integrating standard applications and giving us a comprehensive intranet.

"We're confident that, with our outsourcing partners, we have the charter to make this happen."