Hummingbird chief hails Queensland deal as Australia's largest
Hummingbird chief hails Queensland deal as Australia's largest
Hummingbird and LogicaCMG have secured what is thought to be the largest EDRMS (electronic document and records management system) to have ever been up for grabs in Australia.
After a very long and detailed tender process, the companies' joint bid beat stiff competition to secure the contract to deploy an EDRMS across the whole of the Queensland Government.
"In my opinion, though I am not privy to all the commercial details of our competitors, this is the largest single EDRMS deal to occur in Australia," said Tony Hughes, managing director of Hummingbird Australia. "It is the first true whole-of government initiative of its kind in the country, encompassing all the agencies within the Queensland Government."
Hughes noted that the deal goes beyond a centralised part of government making recommendations to agencies, as the Queensland Government has procured on behalf of all the agencies within the state.
The whole-of-government approach enables the standardisation of business processes and improves consistency in the management of information. The EDRMS system will facilitate State Government agency compliance with regulatory requirements for records management.
In July 2003, Queensland State Government adopted a shared services business model, which aligned all Government agencies into clusters to create five Shared Service Providers (SSPs). The EDRMS is a key element of the State’s Shared Service Initiative. The initiative provides common solutions for information management for Government departments and centralised support functions, including finance, human resources,technology and property and facilities management. The EDRMS will also be made available to Statutory Authorities and Government owned corporations (GOCs).
Hughes said that while LogicaCMG primed the engagement, Hummingbird was aware of the Queensland Government's requirements, not just through the tender being issued, but rather as a result of their long-term presence in the state.
"We have been engaged in Queensland for a number of years, so we had a really good sense of what the requirements were going to be."
While the names of the companies that bid for the business were not disclosed, it is believed that all the vendors operating in this market submitted a bid, from the smaller, local companies to the very large multinationals.
The Queensland Government ran a very thorough and arduous tender process, which included a very detailed tender document, a scripted demonstration over three days, a three-month proof of concept and acceptance trial process by multiple agency users and in-depth performance testing and platform configurations, before Hummingbird and LogicaCMG's joint bid finally prevailed.
Hughes believes the deal offers a strong indication of where the government market is heading.
"One thing we have seen in the industry is that within government, which is a key vertical market for us, both in Australia and globally, the market is maturing rapidly. There have been many EDRMS initiatives that have been very records management focused and have failed to deploy the volume across organisations within government.
"What we are seeing now is a focus on moving beyond compliance and records management to have these initiatives deliver value across the government organisation, and that's very much what Queensland Government is focused on. We believe that will be a lighthouse implementation across government within Australia."
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