Press Release
Leeton Shire resolves risk profile issues with Civica’s managed services
December 9, 2009
Leeton Shire Council, in the Riverina region of NSW, is moving its Authority enterprise software application for local government to a managed services solution from Civica, to resolve risk management issues.
When David Laugher became General Manager early in 2009 he saw that IT support had been under-resourced for a number of years, and there were issues in the risk management area.
“The arrangements were vested in a single contract with one individual who was responsible for support as well as providing hardware, software and our Internet service,” said David. “If anything had happened to him, we would have been sunk. We needed to look at an affordable upgrade strategy that would give us the sureties we needed, maintain consistency of upgrades and guarantee future growth.”
Under the new managed services arrangement, Leeton will have its hardware and software resources fully maintained at Civica’s data centre in Sydney, connected via a dedicated virtual private network (VPN) line.
As Leeton is moving to a completely new environment, the systems are being thoroughly tested to ensure that all users have access to the right applications with the right levels of security, and that all issues are ironed out prior to the switch-over. The cutover will take place when management are confident that all the data is in place on Civica’s servers.
When this happens Leeton will have access to new functionality in Authority’s Customer Requests Management system and the HP TRIM electronic document management system supplied by Civica. Previously Council has been unable to use these applications without increasing the capacity on its existing servers and incurring further additional ongoing cost.
According to David Laugher, Civica worked closely with Council to ensure Leeton could meet its budgetary goals yet receive new functionality. He said Civica worked with Council to ensure the required levels of staff confidence required to make the managed services decision.
David commented: “When Civica’s technical people came in, they spent some time showing the system to our IT group from a user/technical perspective. I think that was the turning point when staff saw it running live and became comfortable that the systems were just as accessible.”
Discussing the benefits of having a managed services solution, he said: “I will be able to sleep at nights!”
He added: “The challenge has been making sure that everything works and I now have assurance that backups will be available at all times. We had a hiccup earlier in the year when we discovered that our backup tape was not recording. It was writing to our hard drive but not transferring to tape. If there had been a major crash, we would have been unable to do offsite recovery. What I’m looking forward to most is knowing that our systems will be safe and we can plan into the future.”
Leeton Shire is an irrigated agricultural area, predominantly a rice growing region that has suffered the impact of climate change and lack of water. A recent allocation means there should be a reasonable crop of rice this year, which can put the area back on track. Leeton is the home of SunRice, which operates processing facilities that mill and pack rice, and rice flour, and manufacture rice cakes and convenience rice food. SunRice employs 600 people in Australia and 700 overseas. According to David Laugher, Leeton is a resilient community. Local schools recently won state finals in a Community Partnerships program, while more awards are expected as a result of strong community activity. Accessible by road, air and rail, Leeton is situated halfway between Sydney and Melbourne.