Tassie council moving entirely to the cloud

As the Tasmanian Government takes strides towards deploying the Tasmanian Cloud, the state’s Glenorchy City Council has commenced a project to transform into a fully cloud-based operation.

The council will transition from using a suite of TechnologyOne products on-premises to using the OneCouncil service on the TechnologyOne Cloud.

The OneCouncil suite encompasses community engagement, development and regulatory services, asset, works and human resource management, and corporate services. It includes built-in disaster recovery capabilities.

Glenorchy City Council ICT Project Officer Anna Holland said moving to the cloud will allow the organisation to replace its ageing on-premises IT infrastructure, which it can’t afford to support in house.

“With technology changing so rapidly, it was hard for our small team to keep pace. The cloud strategy takes care of all of this for us, and enables access to information anywhere, at any time and from any device,” she said.

Shifting to the cloud will also allow the council to better mobilise its workforce, Holland said. While half the council’s field staff is still using clipboards and paper, the cloud move will allow them to replace this with tablets and smartphones.

“This will really improve productivity, and creates a proactive workforce that can work smarter and provide customers with a better experience,” Holland said.

The Tasmanian Government is embarking on a project to roll out the whole-of-government Tasmanian Cloud, and recently released a discussion paper calling for comments to help determine the nature and scope of the project.

The Hodgman government has pledged to move whole-of-government data to on-island data centres within four years. These data centres will be operated as a service by multiple providers.

In another technology initiative the government has launched its new ICT Workforce Development Plan, which identifies actions needed to grow Tasmania’s ICT skills base.

The plan outlines a series of initiatives to be taken over the next three years. Through the actions, the government aims to improve the match between the skills of those looking to work in the ICT industry and the skills demands of employers.

Tasmanian Minister for Information Technology and Innovation Michael Ferguson said the ICT workforce is being reshaped by emerging trends including cloud computing, big data and advanced cybersecurity threats.

“The actions identified in the plan will lead to better collaboration between industry and education and training organisations, better articulation of pathways into work and career opportunities, and coordinated actions to increase planning for the future IT workforce,” he said.

According to the plan, peak body TasICT plans to work with education providers on initiatives aimed at promoting ICT education and workplace learning opportunities.

The government, through Skills Tasmania, has also introduced a $35,000 grant through the plan to encourage more participation in ICT education and training.

Minister for State Growth Matthew Groom noted that while the number of ICT jobs in Australia has doubled since 1999, ICT enrolments in training and education have fallen by 55% over the same period.

The Hodgman government has also announced a plan to use social media to help attract 1.5 million visitors a year to the state by 2020.

The #Tassie365 project is designed to encourage visitors to share their photos online via Instagram and other social media channels. As part of the project, visitors to tourist destination Cradle Mountain are being encouraged to take photos of the landscape and post it using the hashtag #Cradle365.

During the one-year duration of the project, the photos will show the landcape through changing seasons, weather and lighting. If the campaign is a success, it may be expanded to other Tasmanian landmarks.

Image courtesy of Fiona Henderson under CC