IT Trends

Queensland Department of Ed Re Ups with Outsourced IT Services

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 02/08/10

The Queensland Department of Education and Training has renewed a three-year outsourcing services contract with Unisys' Australian subsidiary. Under the agreement, Unisys will continue providing IT services to all Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes across the state. As part of the initiative, the company said it expects to emphasize the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) methodology in IT processes.

The contract is valued at about AUS$41 million (US$38 million) during the initial three-year term. It can be renewed twice for one-year periods.

A Unisys team of 85 will provide IT services for students, teachers, and staff at 90 campuses across 13 TAFE Queensland institutes and the Australian Agricultural College. The vendor will support 330 servers and 19,000 desktops, manage the local and wide area networks, and provide help desk services to respond to 75,000 support calls per year.

Unisys said it plans to introduce new and improved processes and toolsets for service management, service desk, change management, problem management, and asset management. The processes and toolsets will be aligned to the ITIL set of practices and policies for IT service management, which is designed to improve service delivery efficiency and quality.